The twins birth story pt.1

On Thursday, April 22nd by husband and I went in for what we thought was going to be a routine check up on my cervix. I had a cerclage placed at about 20 weeks and I was now 27 weeks with high hopes I would make it to at least 33 weeks pregnant. At my previous check we learned that I was dilated ALL the way down to my stitches and it was the only thing keeping these babies in. Prior to this appointment, the doctors didn’t seem too worried that I was down to the stitches. The timeline for a cerclage is a total guessing game with no guaranteed timelines. As I’m sitting there, the ultrasound tech was having a hard time finding my cervix. I didn’t think anything of it because…well…I wasn’t expecting anything. She brought in a doctor who decided to do a “manual” cervix check and said, “well, we can’t find your cervix because there’s nothing there. You’re dilated to a 3 and we need to get you to the hospital.” Umm WHAT?! To say I was panicked is an understatement. I remember feeling so shocked and just paralyzed by fear. I was trying to put on a brave face and take deep breaths as I tried to swallow a complete meltdown. They grabbed a wheelchair and off we went to the hospital across the street. I’ve never experienced being whisked away so slowly. Everything happened so fast but it was also like time stopped. What do I tell my boss? Will I be able to work from the hospital? how will this affect my maternity leave? Seriously what the hell are we going to do?! Once we got settled into our room at Labor & Delivery, my stitches were removed. There was no point in keeping them since their job was done and they were no longer holding my cervix closed. Keeping the stitches in would just damage my cervix since I was dilating through them. Operation “keep the babies in as long as possible” was starting. We were told it was VERY likely, once the stitches were removed, that I could go into labor and the babies would be born via emergency c-section that day. Umm today?! I’m only 27 weeks!! Everyone always talked about this “threshold of survival” being 27 weeks and I couldn’t even fathom the idea of losing one or both of our babies yet it was also all I could think about.

So we waited. I was placed on a magnesium drip (which made me feel absolutely horrid) and we started steroid shots to support the babies lungs. About 12 hours after my stitches were removed I started having some seriously concerning contractions from midnight to about 4am the next morning. It was some of the worst pain I have ever felt. The worst part? I couldn’t just get up and move through the contractions. I couldn’t breathe or go into the “primal state of womanhood.” All I could think was please stop! please stop! please stop! for the love of God please stop! and just laid on bed so still just moaning. I was so uncomfortable from everything and the fear was intensifying with every contraction. Will my babies survive? How often do babies survive born at 27 weeks? I don’t know how i’m going to survive this. I was hot and nauseas from the magnesium drip and absolutely hated having a catheter but I was put on bedrest and it needed to happen at this point. By some miracle I fell asleep and the contractions significantly slowed down.

Friday, April 23rd

We woke up with a huge sigh of relief that I was still pregnant. I got my second steroid shot around 11am so the next 24 hours were crucial. My uterus had calmed down quite a bit and we were feeling hopeful although it was very short lived. My oxygen levels were decreasing pretty rapidly and the babies followed suit. The doctors believed the magnesium drip was helping my uterus but hurting my oxygen so we decided to wean off of it early. Pros and cons. Pros and cons. They wanted one more day of magnesium to hopefully stop labor “once and for all.” We needed to raise my oxygen for the sake of the babies who were now having repeat decelerations along with desaturations. This means that their heart rates were dropping along with their oxygen levels. These moments in my life were the closest feeling I’ve ever had to matrix. I had 3 monitors on my belly, one for each baby and one for my uterus. I was hooked up 24/7. I had an IV for all the things, a catheter plus oxygen. Can I just unplug already? The days were okay but the nights were hard. There was some comfort of the sunlight but when the nights came, sleep was hard to come by. The joy from hearing your baby’s heartbeat quickly turns to holding your breath when you start to hear that deceleration. One minute your laying there drifting off to the sounds of your babies heart beating and then you hear that monitor slow down more and more and more. Nurses FLY into your room, turn on ALL of the lights, disconnect every plug from the wall (because they are taking me back for an emergency c-section). It was that dreaded 8-minute mark. Over and over we heard, “if his heart rate stays down for 8 minutes, we have to take you back.” My sweet son, Jude, took his time in those 8 minutes. Almost every time. Sometimes it was 4 minutes but often he used the entire 8 minutes while everyone was just watching and waiting. beep….beep……..beep…………….beep. They would blast me with oxygen and flip me from one side to the next trying to get him to come back up. My muscles are so tense as I’m just holding my breath. After this very dramatic event, everyone would go back to their places and we would try to get some sleep only to find ourselves in the very same position an hour or two later right when the adrenaline was started to ware off. We were constantly on the edge just waiting to see what the babies would do.

Saturday, April 24th

We woke up overjoyed to still be pregnant plus it had been 24 hours since our last steroid shot. This milestone gave us a little bit of confidence that the babies would be okay. However, we woke up with an entirely new set of challenges. My oxygen levels tanked to a dangerous level and we started playing the “can we diagnose Katelyn” game. I had such a hard time breathing and we just continued to increase my oxygen support until I was on 10 liters of oxygen. That’s a lot of freakin oxygen. Why is it so hard for me to breathe? We were told, “if your oxygen support needs to increase anymore, we will need to transfer you to the ICU.” We needed answers fast! If I was transferred to the ICU my husband, Dylan, would not be able to stay with me because of the covid situation. Fuck that! That was the last thing we needed. I just pictured myself all alone in a hospital room, barely breathing, barely staying pregnant and just terrified. They wouldn’t do that to me right? We ruled out covid like 5 times, I got a ct scan to rule out a pulmonary embolism umm…talk about the scariest possible situation, it wasn’t the flu and we were just stumped. A respiratory specialist was brought in and from my chest x-ray it seemed as though I had developed or caught some form of pneumonia. The bottoms of my lungs were filled with gunk! We were sure our pregnant days were numbered. Breathing was so challenging for me that I couldn’t even stand up from my hospital bed without getting seriously winded. Even with 10 liters of oxygen we could barely keep my numbers above 90. Sitting up was such a task because I was such a whale at this point, had absolutely no strength, I was maneuvering tubes and monitors and just super swollen from essentially being immobile. Thankfully my contractions were fairly mild and we were just stunned by the resiliency of our babies. With one small victory there were just more challenges.

Sunday, April 25th

Today was really our first day of rest. I was staying firm at 3cm dilated, I started responding well to antibiotics and the babies were responding well to the oxygen support. We had no real big events and started to believe, hmm maybe I’ll just be here for a few weeks, I can do this! My days consisted of lots of respiratory exercises (I had 3 different devices I was using) and I was begging to get my catheter taken out. Eating a full meal was a constant question (they didn’t want me to have a belly full of food if an emergency c-section was looming). Literally every day was a new day, new questions, new information, new things to consider but mostly just watching and waiting. Pros and cons. Pros and cons.

Monday, April 26th

Today was the first day I was able to get out of bed. It was still a challenge to maintain healthy oxygen levels so my movements were very minimal. My legs were incredibly swollen from bedrest and fluids but I got my catheter out!!! (can you tell I hated my catheter?). We tried taking it out once but had to put it back in because I couldn’t handle getting out of bed. So, if you’re asking yourself how I went potty, it was just a catheter and a bed pan. I did get to try a bedside potty once or twice. Yes, it’s was as awful as you’re probably imagining. It’s just the least and most dignifying situation to be a mother in such circumstances. At this point, Jude became notorious for his ups and downs. The doctors were beginning to think that his hand was near his umbilical chord and later confirmed this via ultrasound. He was a very active baby in utero and changed positions often. Our daughter, Georgeanna (aka “Gina”), had decelerations and desaturations but not as often as Jude. Her “trick” was that she was incredibly low. INCREDIBLY LOW. Her heart rate monitor was essentially on my pubic bone, that’s how low she was. The nurses would joke and say, “oh my gosh! how could you even walk?!” She was so low that we could never actually get a measurement of her head throughout the pregnancy.

Tuesday, April 27th

We finally got our first decent night of sleep with one scary situation around 3am. Jude had his longest deceleration yet but recovered quite well. Can you just imagine sitting there, holding your breath for nearly 8 minutes while you’re waiting for your baby’s heartbeat to speed up? We finally got to talk about less monitoring and what the “threshold for action” would be. We were getting used to these ups and downs. Or really what I should say is that we were becoming desensitized to the intensity of our situation. Finally, I only needed 1 liter of oxygen for support and I was close to being off of it completely. It was a LONG few days. I was about to have my last dose of antibiotics so things were looking up. We still aren’t sure how or where I got the pneumonia but gosh it was scary. My contractions were still present but I wasn’t really feeling them. We could see them happening on the monitor but nothing concerning. We talked with the doctors and came up with a plan to opt for a c-section unless we made it further in the pregnancy. We planned for a growth scan around 30 weeks. The babies were just too small and there were too many reasons to believe they would not handle labor and delivery very well with so many issues already. It just felt like the safest option for everyone.

Wednesday, April 28th- Sunday, May 2nd

The days following were more of the same. I tested positive for gestational diabetes (which is quite common for twin moms) so we just altered my diet. I was monitored a few times a day, the babies still had some decelerations and desaturations and I was still having contractions. I couldn’t feel most of them but every now and then I’d get a really intense one that would last about 6 minutes or so. It was exhausting. Just imagine squeezing your abs for 6 straight minutes. As we expected, Jude did not handle those particular contractions well. We spoke with the NICU team to get all of our questions answered and just waited and celebrated each new day. I wanted to believe that I would stay pregnant for a few more weeks. The nurses and doctors started asking me more and more frequently if I was feeling contractions because they were starting to occur more often and they could see it while I was wearing the monitor. I knew my days were numbered. We couldn’t put me on more meds to slow things down because it would lower my blood pressure too much. I already have pretty low blood pressure so it was a constant analysis of the risks and benefits. Pros and cons. Pros and cons. I had come to terms with the high probability of a c-section.

As you can imagine, this was not the birth experience I had hoped or prayed for. I was incredibly naive going into this pregnancy. Well, I wasn’t naive until we learned about the twins. I had originally hoped for an unmedicated home birth. It’s almost laughable now. It’s actually very laughable. Once we found out there were two babies, things changed drastically. In the state of CO, twin births MUST be in a hospital AND in an operating room. No midwives, no birth centers, no home births so my birth dreams where shattered pretty early on. I needed to pivot. I changed my mindset and learned everything I could in a pretty short amount of time. I shifted my posture to trust my intuition and asked as many questions as I could. In this case, I found that fear mostly came from a lack of information so I empowered myself with information and trusted God with the rest. I had to completely surrender control and realize that these babies were in God’s hands from the moment of conception. Although any woman that has experienced pregnancy after loss understands this balance of fear and surrender. I’ve never experienced such a level of resilience in my life and I was building endurance for the journey ahead. To sum this up in one word? FORTITUDE.