Robin and I met each other for lunch on Wednesday. It was just another normal day with the 2 of us trying to spend some QT together while we still had a chance. Robin has been having contractions for a couple weeks now and Wed was no different. We had just been to the doctor on Monday, though, and according to him the babies were still holed up. But after lunch Robin was still having some contractions that were fairly painful. So she decided to go in to the doctor's office to see what was up. Well, apparently it wasn't the chile releno that she was feeling. The doctor said she was having contractions (you don't need an MD to know that), that her blood pressure was a little high, and that she was a "finger tip" dilated. I'm not sure if that finger tip means the size of her pinky, or more like the size of Shaquille O'Neils thumb. They decided to send her next door to the hospital to get checked out. She called me at work, and I left to come meet her at the hospital. I think that we were both thinking that this was just another false alarm based off of our experience the weekend before. When I get here, that were finishing up with taking her info. They continued to monitor her contractions, which were coming fairly regularly every 5 or so minutes. After abotut an hour and a half, the doctor came by to check on her. By this time she was 2cm dilated and 70% efaced and was in labor. And then things started to move pretty quickly. Within 30 minutes they had Robin reaedy to go and had taken her back to the OR to prep for the C-section. Shortly after, they let me come back, and were already working to get the babies out.
Within a few minutes they delivered Addison, and just a minute after that they pulled out Emma (whose names we still did not know at the time). They cleaned them off, took their vitals signs, and measured and weighed them. Robin did great the entire time. I kindof just went back and forth between mom and babies to let her know what was going on. I took some pictures and would bring the camera over to her so she could look. After a while, I was able to bring Baby B over to Robin, and we decided to name her Emma Grace. She weighed 4 lbs 12 oz and was delverd at 6:43. Then Baby A came over to meet her momma, and we named her Addison Margaret. She weighed 5 lbs 4 oz and was born at 6:42. The neonatologist checked them out in the OR and decided that they were healhy enough to go to the regular baby nursery.
Here is Addison.
And here is Emma.
Here are some more pics:
Today we found out that Emma has a heart murmur. A pediatric cardiologist came to check on her and do an EKG. She has a ventricular septal defect that allows blood to flow between the left and right ventricles. There are 3 small holes. The doctor seems to think 2 of these are very small and will likely heal on their own. The 3rd is a bit larger. He also thinks that there is a good chance that this one may heal on his own, but at this point is not sure. So it is something they will have to keep an eye on to see what happens. In the short term it is not a problem, but if it is too large and does not close they may have to perform surgery. It sounds like the chances of that are fairly low, and we certainly hope that is not needed.
We have been getting a fair amount of sleep, as we have been sending the babies to the nursery at night for about 6 hours or so. This way, we feed them, send them to the nursery where the receive their next feeding, and then they send them back to us. Because they are a bit small and their blood sugars are borderline low, we are giving them a bottle in addition to breastfeeding them. They seem to be doing really well eating both ways. There has been no shortage of dirty diapers (see the above pic of my first diaper change).
Thanks to everyone for all of the prayers and messages we have received.
