Patrick Gray Haas, 6 lbs 4 oz
Born October 16, 11:00 and 11:01
Most of you already know this...via BookFace, email or real life. But I'm keeping this blog going as a sort of diary for the boys for their first few months. Feel free to continue following or drop us now that I'm a blubbering new mama.
Teddy and Patrick came via c-section at 37 weeks (3 weeks early). They showed no signs of wanting to come out, but my pregnancy-induced high blood pressure concerned the doctor too much to allow them to stay in my belly.
We arrived to the hospital at 8am. It was a beautiful morning, with streaks of the sunrise still present in the sky and reflecting off the buildings of downtown Minneapolis.
The staff at U of M hospital began prep work for surgery right away. I had vitals taken, tummy shaved, IV inserted (AWFUL, awful, awful), etc. I was wheeled in to the OR and Ry was made to wait before putting on scrubs. There were some delays with the anesthesiologist and Ry had to wait longer than expected. He got nervous that something had gone wrong. It hadn't, but I felt terrible from the drugs but, before I knew it, I was numb from the waist down and the doctor was starting the procedure.
Of course I didn't feel any pain, but a C-section is still a very uncomfortable process. I was very aware of being pulled on and tugged at. I felt a lot of pressure from the doctor's maneuvers. I am so squeamish that I just couldn't handle the thought of what was happening to me. So, I just held Ry's hand, kept his face really close to mine, and insisted that we NOT talk about babies or surgeries or anything that would remind me of where I was. So, I decided to give him a honey-do list of all the home projects we needed to do. It did the trick; my mind was (somewhat) taken off of the fact that I was awake during major abdominal surgery.
All went well except that Teddy (Baby A) didn't want to come out. It took some painful pushing on of my abdomen to coax him from the womb, but he made it - and Patrick followed shortly thereafter. They lifted Teddy over the screen so I could see him and I instantly cried. He was so perfect. And they brought Patrick around to the side. And he was perfect, too. I only got to see them for a second before the nurses took them to the other side of the room for an evalaution, which is important to do immediately with twins and babies who arrive early.
All of the nurses (there were a lot, including 5 from the NICU in case anything was wrong) just kept saying, "they're both over six pounds!" and "look at that hair!" I was so happy that they came out weighing a good amount. Ry went to the other side of the room to watch the evaluation and a few long moments later, he brought the babies to me so I could see them. Ry was just glowing. I'm sure I was, too, under the oxygen mask and hair net.
Ryan, almost as squeamish as I, made the dumb move of looking at the surgery in process when he walked from one side of the room to the other. He said there was a bucket of guts. His guess is that it was the placentas. Good diagnosis, Doc Haas.
Then it was time for the boys to leave the OR and get a more thorough evaluation. I insisted that Ryan go with so he could talk with the pediatrician. I was left on the table, still sick from the drugs and just wishing that Ry was still with me. But it ended eventually and I moved onto the recovery room. The pediatrician came to see me and assure me that the boys were perfect, with all their fingers and toes. She did warn me that their heads were a little odd looking due to the cramped conditions of the womb. The doc said this would correct itself, but Patrick still has a weird crease on the back of his skull and Teddy has a "dormer" on the side of his head almost a month later. Whatever. They're still perfect.
I then got wheeled to the room where babies were and they were put in my arms together. Not until I held them together did the reality of mommyhood set in.
OK, this is getting mighty long, so I'll wrap it up in a few sentences. We stayed in the hospital for 3 days (left a day early), got very little sleep, had one awesome nurse who made the breastfeeding process a lot easier (yep, I'm breastfeeding both and, yep, its HARD), had a crazy nurse who wouldn't let Ry too close to the babies, had a mean nurse who scolded Ryan for sleeping through a feeding (no wonder we left early), had lots of visitors including two over the moon grandparents...and so on and so on like many other birth experiences before us.
What I'll remember most from those first few days is is Ry and I simply spending a lot of time staring at our babies and loving them and each other more than we ever thought possible.
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