The Babies Have Arrived!

As you have probably heard, the twins have arrived!

Labor wasn't too bad. I started having some contractions around 12pm, we were at the hospital by 3:30pm and I had an epidural by 4:30 or 5pm. (Nothing compared with the days of contractions I had with Maggie!) By some miracle, both babies were head down for the first time in the pregnancy! That meant that things were looking good for a natural delivery for both babies. The other cool thing was that we had the same nurse Gail who helped deliver Maggie (and we really liked her!).

The epidural I got was so good, that I really couldn't feel anything. By the time they thought to check, Erin was ready to come. They rushed us off to the operating room (you have to deliver twins there, just in case) while Mike was still getting on all his OR garb. Half of the world was in the OR and once they got everything organized, Erin arrived after a few pushes at 8:26pm. She remained "Baby A" for awhile since she didn't actually have her name yet. It was between Erin and Kaitlyn and we didn't decide until around 11pm. She was tiny, but beautiful...6lbs 1 oz and 20 inches long.

After Erin was born, Emily was still pretty high so we waited for her to come down. However, with all the extra room, she decided to turn around and was breech again! They worked very hard to turn her around. Several people pushed and pulled and turned my belly for 45 minutes before they gave up. She did not want to turn around! (It seems like she may be a stubborn child.) They thought maybe they could just grab her leg and pull her out, but her cord was going to come out first, which is a very bad thing. That is when they decided to do a c-section. Bummer! The possibility of having both things was the one thing I had been dreading since we found out we were having twins. Maybe it was because I was SO drugged up, but I didn't take it too badly. At least it wasn't an emergency because Emily was in distress. That is what I really didn't want. They got everything ready and pulled her out at 9:54pm. She weighed in at 5lbs, 11oz and was also 20 inches long. I didn't get to see her quite as quickly, but she was beautiful too! Both babies were very healthy, they got 9's on the apgar scale. The nurses said that only Dr.'s kids get 10's, so that is very good. It took them quite awhile to fix me up so we didn't get back to our room until around 11:15pm. Since everything was going so well for me and the babies they decided to move us out of the high-risk unit about an hour after that. It was pretty much a parade of people coming in and out after that...checking this baby's temperature, that baby's blood sugar, my blood pressure, etc. We did not sleep at all. Here are some more pictures of us at the hospital.