Well, 20 minutes came and went with nary a nurse or doctor or Anthony in sight. In my mind I was already angry at Anthony for apparently running into someone he knew and holding a super long convo while his wife was laboring with twins floors above or on his way to Mickey D’s after taking one sad look at the apparent lack of selection at the hospital caf or just plain chickening out of watching his daughters being born…and then the door opened and in walked my prince with lunch and the reasonable explanation that there was a huge line for food. After all, it was lunch time and people do eat. I knew there had to be a reasonable explanation for his prolonged absence…
Not five minutes after Anthony marched in with his lunch and started monging did my nurse and doctor waltz in with news that the operating room was prepped for landing and that they’d be rolling me on in to get some practice pushes in…practice pushes? How hard could pushing be and was practice really necessary? Heart racing at the thought of the twins impending arrival, I pulled the old smile and nod and let myself be rolled down the hall and into the brightly lit, heavily machined room where one of the best and hardest hours of my life would be spent.
Anthony told “If you feel like you’re going to pass out, just sit down, don’t look for a chair, just sit down on the floor”, stirrups occupied, and the very last shred of my modesty scrapped, the practice pushing began. Since I obviously couldn’t feel my lower half, I had to be told when to push…a quite unnerving idea and fact. At my nurse’s command, I had to push and try to clench my overstretched abs as hard as I possibly could for ten seconds, 3 times in a row. And I thought the hard part was already over…the epidural was sure to make anything that occurred after it’s procurement a cinch, right? W to the R to the O to the N to the G. After ten minutes of this so called ‘practice’, our first-born hadn’t moved an inch. Feeling quite the failure, having lost any energy my morning bowl of Lucky Charms had supplied, and still having no clue as to how I was to move my seemingly unmovable body parts any differently in order to expel her, my new focus was on trying to keep a chipper attitude and hold back imminent tears (and breakfast…lucky on the tears, not so lucky on the breakfast).
I’ll skip the doom and gloom of the next half hour (spent doing exactly the same thing as the previous 10 minutes with almost the same conclusion) to the moment when my nurse had called my doctor back up to the OR knowing he could remedy the situation at hand – baby having barely moved down and out after 45 minutes of ‘pushing’/me scrunching up my face in hopes that my lower extremities would follow suit and scrunch up and out too. Well, he did just that. Wielding the powerful suction-cup-to-head-of-baby tool, I distinctly remember him saying “Get ready to meet your first daughter” minutes after his arrival and out came Seraphia Marie (directly after which I felt tons lighter already and the second amniotic sac was broken) followed by her sweet sib Cecilia Rosaline a mere five minutes after. The flood gates of tears opened and our amazement was once again compounded as we gazed upon our two little souls in the flesh.
Not five minutes after Anthony marched in with his lunch and started monging did my nurse and doctor waltz in with news that the operating room was prepped for landing and that they’d be rolling me on in to get some practice pushes in…practice pushes? How hard could pushing be and was practice really necessary? Heart racing at the thought of the twins impending arrival, I pulled the old smile and nod and let myself be rolled down the hall and into the brightly lit, heavily machined room where one of the best and hardest hours of my life would be spent.
Anthony told “If you feel like you’re going to pass out, just sit down, don’t look for a chair, just sit down on the floor”, stirrups occupied, and the very last shred of my modesty scrapped, the practice pushing began. Since I obviously couldn’t feel my lower half, I had to be told when to push…a quite unnerving idea and fact. At my nurse’s command, I had to push and try to clench my overstretched abs as hard as I possibly could for ten seconds, 3 times in a row. And I thought the hard part was already over…the epidural was sure to make anything that occurred after it’s procurement a cinch, right? W to the R to the O to the N to the G. After ten minutes of this so called ‘practice’, our first-born hadn’t moved an inch. Feeling quite the failure, having lost any energy my morning bowl of Lucky Charms had supplied, and still having no clue as to how I was to move my seemingly unmovable body parts any differently in order to expel her, my new focus was on trying to keep a chipper attitude and hold back imminent tears (and breakfast…lucky on the tears, not so lucky on the breakfast).
I’ll skip the doom and gloom of the next half hour (spent doing exactly the same thing as the previous 10 minutes with almost the same conclusion) to the moment when my nurse had called my doctor back up to the OR knowing he could remedy the situation at hand – baby having barely moved down and out after 45 minutes of ‘pushing’/me scrunching up my face in hopes that my lower extremities would follow suit and scrunch up and out too. Well, he did just that. Wielding the powerful suction-cup-to-head-of-baby tool, I distinctly remember him saying “Get ready to meet your first daughter” minutes after his arrival and out came Seraphia Marie (directly after which I felt tons lighter already and the second amniotic sac was broken) followed by her sweet sib Cecilia Rosaline a mere five minutes after. The flood gates of tears opened and our amazement was once again compounded as we gazed upon our two little souls in the flesh.
We’ve had glimpses of what heaven must be like in those precious moments after our girls were born and everyday since. The birth story isn’t over yet though. Stay tuned for the fourth and final installment coming your way, hopefully, within the next couple days. :)
