(I still want to post some pictures from Thanksgiving, but I’ll do that in another post.)

Okay, so one year ago. It was a Monday morning. I’d spent the weekend before miserable. I had a rash all over my body that nothing helped. I wasn’t sleeping. I was just done. Done, done, done. I spent all day Sunday practicing what I was going to say to my doctor when he came to see me Monday morning.

When he walked in with a medical student in tow, he took one look at me and knew it was time. We knew the babies were big, and since it was only a matter of time before the pre-eclampsia got worse, he agreed that it was time to schedule my c-section. They left the room to go check the schedule. I was on pins and needles.

A little while later, the med student came in.

“How does 6:30 tomorrow morning sound?”

!!!!!

Sounds great!! I was ecstatic. I called George and asked him if he was ready to be a daddy. (No, he was not. Ha ha!) I called my mom. She was teary and excited. I was soooo happy! That was definitely the best day so far. Looking back, I kind of wish we could have scheduled it a bit later – I think just having a date set was what made me happy. But hey, December 4 sounded like a good birthday to me! (My Uncle Greg’s birthday is on the fifth, my cousin Sara’s is on the 10th, my cousin Matthew’s is on the 16th, and my mom’s is on the 17th. Not many days left for me to pick! Though I would have been thrilled to make it to my mom’s birthday.)

That evening, my room was filled with people. George, my mom, my in-laws, my aunt, my cousin….it got a little overwhelming. So we sent everyone away and my mom went to get me the last meal I’d get for a while. At around 9, the anesthesiologist came by to put my IV in. I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink after midnight, so you can bet I was guzzling water and chewing on the yummy hospital ice until 11:59. (Okay, it’s possible I cheated ever so slightly after that…I got really thirsty at night!)

The rest of the recap will have to come tomorrow, of course…. 🙂

Sorry I haven’t been too good at keeping up with my pre-birth nostalgic posts. But one year ago today, things started to get ugly. I had been in the hospital for five days. The novelty was wearing off. I was bored, and getting more uncomfortable, dealing with less sleep.

I had been asking for a growth ultrasound for days, since the babies hadn’t been measured since my appointment at 30 weeks, about three weeks prior. Boy, was that a mistake! Well, I mean, obviously not really, but ugh, that was the most uncomfortable 45 minutes of my entire pregnancy. Being flat on your back, while being prodded with an ultrasound probe is bad. Awful. But finally, it was over, and we got the babies’ weights…all between 3 lbs, 10 oz and 4 lbs, 11 oz. Pretty accurate, I guess, considering the boys weighed between 4 lbs, 3 oz and 4 lbs 10 oz at birth.

I also got a fancy new air mattress that day. A wider, more comfortable bed made for bariatric patients. You know, the patients who are super-obese. Hmm. Anyway, it had a digital scale built into the bed. Ack! I made sure that was turned off! Scary. Heh. At that point, I think I’d gained around 75 lbs, probably. All in my belly and nose. (My nose got really swollen and weird looking. Ick.) Also, my ankles.

So that day, November 30, was when it started to go downhill. I was starting to hope that delivery would be sooner, rather than later….

So a year ago today…that’s when the real action started! Well, sorta. Relatively speaking.

As per my doctor’s instructions, I called the L&D floor that morning to see if they had a bed ready for me. They said they did, and so at around noon, George and I headed to the hospital. We weren’t sure what floor I was supposed to go to, and a helpful (or so we thought) security guard directed us to the twelfth floor. Which was for cancer patients, not pregnant women. Oops. We finally found the floor we were supposed to go to, and I found a nurse, who took me to my room.

Quite a nice room it was, too. Big, almost at the end of a hall. Television, mini-fridge, lots of windows (looking out on the a/c on an adjoining roof), pull out sofa bed, rocking chair, big bathroom. George got me settled in (i.e., set up my laptop so I could use the wireless internet connection.) He went off to run some errands while I put on my jammies and got into bed.

A round of doctors and other medical professionals came to visit. A neonatologist, an anesthesiologist, a physical therapist, and my doctor. Later, some nurses came to monitor the babies and myself.

Aside from the 24-hour urine collections (fun!!!), the monitoring was the worst part of the hospital experience. Scratch that, monitoring was worse that collecting my pee in a jug that sat in a bin of ice next to the toilet. Four monitors on my belly, which was spread with a thick layer of ultrasound gel. Which dried and got itchy. One monitor for each baby, plus one for contractions. And let me remind you that babies move. Even when they’re that squished in there, they move. Off the monitors. A lot. They don’t seem to like being pinned down like that. So they kick them too.

After about 45 minutes of mostly unsuccessful monitoring (they wanted to see 20 consecutive minutes of all three babies’ heartrates simultaneously) a resident came in with a portable u/s machine to take a peek at the babies. Now, see, isn’t a five minute ultrasound so much easier than an hour of wrestling with monitors? Yeesh. Unfortunately, I never got that special treatment after that.

Later that afternoon, dinner was served. Yuck. I don’t remember what it was, but I refused to eat it. George did, though. He’d brought me a salad from Whole Foods.

Aaaand, that was my first day in the hospital. Okay, maybe recapping every single day from here on out will be unnecessary. The first few days were a lot of the same. Monitoring, peeing in jugs, watching television, reading. I got a lot of visitors. It wasn’t too bad for the first five or six days…

Oh yeah, and here is me the day before I was admitted, with some friends who came to visit. MAN, I looked awful. Ew.

Also. Today is our office’s potluck Thanksgiving. Last year it was the Tuesday before I was admitted. It was awesome, I got to cut to the front of the line (one of the bishops let me in front of him) and I think everyone was terrified of me, frankly. Funny story – I was standing by my boss, who was sitting down, and I wanted to warn him about some melted ice on the floor near his chair. I couldn’t lean over to deal with it, so I pointed it out to him. As I was standing, you know, kind of right above it.

He blanched when I pointed to the puddle of water. Ha ha! He thought my water had broken!

Ahh, good times.

I told you I was going to recap the lead-up to the boys’ birth, and it starts out, rather boringly, here. One year ago today. George and I went to my Maternal-Fetal Medicine doctor, Dr. Robichaux, for my 32 week appointment. Actually, I was 31 weeks, 5 days. It was the day after Thanksgiving, and I was swollen and exhausted.

When I hopped on the scale, I had an inkling this wasn’t going to be “just another appointment.” I had gained 17 lbs since my last appointment, 11 days previous. I knew I hadn’t eaten that much turkey and dressing the day before.

Sure enough, when Dr. R walked in after reviewing my blood pressure and other tests, he said just what I figured he would. “We’re admitting you. Right now.” I wasn’t surprised, exactly, but I still got choked up. I wasn’t scared, either, just couldn’t believe the end was coming.

Because I didn’t have full-blown pre-eclampsia yet, I was just heading in that direction, Dr. R agreed to let me “check in” on Sunday instead, two days away. I had friends coming to visit the next day, and I wanted to get everything in order.

So we left the office that day and I went to buy some pajamas for the hospital….