Adventures of the Cupcake Twins: Kieran and Colin’s Birth Story!

When I last posted at 32 weeks, I posted ultrasound pictures from our relatively uneventful MFM appointment. Little did I know that less than a week later I would have pictures of the boys from the outside!

On Sunday, March 24 at about 2am I was having what I thought were, oh I’ll just come out and say it, bad gas pains. There are so many charming side effects of pregnancy, I figured this was one of them. Well, by 8am I was still having the pains with no relief. Ryan convinced me it was time to call the OB. We went ahead into labor and delivery again, even though I was fully expecting them to send me on my way. Well, turns out I was contracting and I was 2 cm dilated! Long story short, I wasn’t going anywhere!

They admitted me to the hospital and decided to put me on full bedrest while they gave me magnesium to stop the contractions. The magnesium was horrible; it made me really warm all the time (even when the room temperature was 60 degrees!). I just felt terrible while on it. Not to mention, it wasn’t doing a great job of stopping the contractions; every now and then the painful contractions would still break through. I ended up having to take Demorol and Stadol pain medications at night.

All day Monday I was still having contractions, but they weren’t too strong, so we thought maybe the magnesium was working. On Tuesday my OB came to see me in the hospital. When she checked me, I had gone from 2 cm dilated to 6 CM DILATED, on top of which, I was still having contractions. At first my OB said I would stay on the magnesium until my contractions broke through, at which point we would deliver. However, there was some concern that my water would break first. Since the boys were breech and since I was so dilated, if my water broke there was a high chance one of the babies’ cords would prolapse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbilical_cord_prolapse if you're curious) , and if that were to happen, I would have to be rushed to the operating room for an emergency c-section. My OB decided that this was too risky of a situation and that it would be better to just do the c-section under a more controlled situation.

At 5:20pm I was taken back to the operating room and prepped for the c-section. I was nervous since I didn’t know what to expect (my childbirth preparedness class was scheduled for 4/6!), but it wasn’t too bad and I had some amazing nurses in the OR with me. Kieran James was born at 5:48pm and Colin Michael was born at 5:50 pm. Since it wasn’t an emergency c-section I was fully conscious and Ryan was able to be in the room with me, so we got to hear their first cries as they were born and Ryan got to see them immediately. As soon as I heard them cry, I was instantly relieved that they were okay.

The boys were taken up to NICU to be evaluated since they were born so early. They have been little rock stars ever since! At first they needed to be on a CPAP machine to help them breathe, and they needed to be under a phototherapy light for excess bilirubin levels. However, it wasn’t long before they were breathing on their own and the only thing they were attached to is a feeding tube as they learned to feed. Since they were born so early they had not learned the suck/swallow reflex that is usually learned in utero. The boys ended up staying in the NICU for 15 days, which wasn’t bad at all considering they were 7 weeks early.

My recovery from the c-section was not so fun. The first time getting out of bed was excruciating, and I continued to be in pain for at least a couple weeks. Only in the past few weeks have I really started to feel like my old self again. I'm told c-section recovery isn't this bad for everybody, and I'm sure having 2 in there only made recovery harder, however every time I see my healthy boys, I know it was worth it!

We can’t believe how lucky we are to be the parents to these two beautiful boys! Our road to get here wasn’t always an easy one, but it was all worth it! Here are some pictures of them while they were in the hospital, and some from when they first came home: