Just When You Think All Is Well

I arrived at the hospital at about ten in the morning as did another of my doctor's patients...and the race was on.  I handed the admitting nurse the card with the scribbly  "Z" on the back as instructed by my doctor over a month before.  I now realized that that "Z" was really a coded "2" so that the nurses would be alerted to the fact that I would be having two babies.  I hoped that this information would give me priority over the other "in labor" patient.  I was wheeled to a labor room and informed that my doctor had not yet arrived, but not to worry.  They assured me that he would be there in time to deliver the babies.

An obstetric nurse listened to the heartbeats of the babies through my bulging belly and asked if the doctor had predicted the gender.  I had asked him but he wouldn't even give me an educated guess.  The nurse said,  "Do you want to know?"  I answered, "Sure".  "Well, the bottom one is a boy and the one on top is a girl."  She didn't even add, "I think."  She seemed so sure that I thought that should make a bet with someone ... maybe my uncertain doctor.  But I didn't.

Both of us  pregnant women were now in serious labor.  The nurses kept running back and forth to our two rooms to see who should be wheeled into the only delivery room of the small hospital first.  The doctor arrived and made the decision.  I should go first.  The first baby, a boy, was delivered very quickly, and while one nurse wrapped the baby in a blanket, the two other nurses immediately began running to the door to wheel the waiting patient into the delivery room.  The doctor yelled, "Wait! there is another one!"  I guess not all the OB nurses had been informed of the multiple birth.  The second baby did not come immediately as expected.  There was a problem.  She, (yes it was a girl as the nurse had predicted) was not in position to be born and had to be turned.  That was not easy.  It took seven additional desperate minutes for our little girl to be born.  They immediately wrapped her in a blanket and whisked her away.  I didn't hear her cry, and that really worried me.  To be honest, I never even gave a thought to that poor woman waiting in the hall to deliver her baby.  For all I know she gave birth in the hall without a doctor.  My only thoughts at this time were the well-being of my two precious little ones.

Our little boy weighed in at 7 pounds, 3 ounces while our baby daughter weighed 6 pounds, 8 ounces.  It was no wonder I was so uncomfortable those last two months.  It was like having two normal sized babies crammed into a space meant for one.  But that meant they were big enough to come home with me in three days (the time that all new mothers were kept in the hospital at that time) ... or at least that is what I thought.  I had had a chance to hold and feed the babies the day after their birth and they were so beautiful and looked so healthy.  But later that day a pediatrician came into my room to inform me that one of the babies had a pretty serious problem.  My heart sank!