The Hogarth Boys have arrived

Well it was alot sooner than I had hoped, only 28 weeks and two days, but the boys were born in a frenzy on October 25th, 2009. Thankfully they are doing well in the NICU at Women's College Hospital/Sunnybrook were they will likely stay for the next 2 or so months.

The Labour: On Saturday night/Sunday morning I could not get to sleep. My back was hurting and I felt so constipated. At mount sinai, where I was being cared for over the previous two weeks, I was being given stool softeners because bed rest tends to cause some constipation. But now that I was at home, it was not part of my routine so that night I took one just to make sure things were still flowing. So all night I thought well it must be the stool softener doing its work and now I had to go to the washroom. At probably my 10th attempt to go to the washroom that night I felt a bulge coming out of the wrong hole (yes, same as last time!!!) I put my hand to stop anything from coming out, woke Dug up and asked him to hold me up, upside down, by my feet so that everything would go back inside. That worked for a bit but I was also having the urge to push still so we called the ambulance. We wanted them to take us to mount sinai or at least credit valley but they thought it would be best, because I already had the urge to push, that we go to the NEAREST hospital, that being Georgetown. Okay, so Georgetown is a small town, with a small hospital. In fact so small that they do not deliver twins there, and needless to say they have no staff or equipment for premies. Obviously, this was NOT were wanted to go and we almost had them convinced to drive us to Credit Valley but then as they had me on stretcher and tried to take me down the stairs (feet first even though I said NO TAKE ME HEAD FIRST) well one step and KABOOM! My water broke. I was soooooooo scared. I seriously thought a baby came flying out! I asked repeatedly "was that a baby?" but they kept saying "no just your mucus plug and water" but if you had seen the look on Dug's face you would have thought for sure a baby came flying out. Anyways, they turned me around, took me head down down the stairs and said that now that my water was broken they couldn't take the risk of driving to credit valley and would have to take me to Georgetown hospital. OH CRAP!!!!

The Delivery: As we arrived at Georgetown hospital we discovered that they were under staffed, under equiped and basically as scared to have there as I was to be there BUT thankfully they had called for a mobile team to come from sick kids hospital downtown. ETA... 2 HOURS!!! Are you friggen kidding me???? This baby's head was crowning, the urge to push was unbearable and they wanted me to wait 2 hours. With every contraction it became more and more difficult to not push and keep the baby inside. I had my legs up in the air with the help of Dug and a super amazing nurse that was making sure the baby wasn't coming out. They had both babies heart rates being monitored and they were fine. I knew if I could just hold out until the sick kids team arrived then at least the babies would have a fighting chance but without the team.... well lets not go there. It had been over 2 hours, I could tell Dug was getting frustrated as we kept asking 'how far is the team?' and nobody knew anything and I was in so much pain and couldn't fight my body any longer so I put my feet down on the table and baby A came out without a sound. They whisked him over to the warming table and I thought 'even Cole and Breanna made a sound when they first came out, a faint little cry' so I figured it was all over but a minute later the sick kids team came to the door and we were like GET THE HELL IN HERE!!! Within moments I could see his hands and arms moving as the team worked on him to get him stablized.

As a side note I call them baby A and B because until they left Georgetown we had not picked out names for them yet, despite Dug's constant nagging that I pick out or at least narrow down some names. Eventually we decided to name baby A, who was born first, Reece, and baby B, Matthew.

Anyhow, now that baby A was out the next task was to get baby B out. At our last ultrasound he was in the breech position and I had hoped that he might turn once he had more space. I wasn't having any contractions and talk of having a c-section was being discussed. Through a portable ultrasound they could see that Baby B started turning and got to tranverse (across) but then decided he liked the breech position better. But I could see that the delivery doctor was thinking that we could get him vaginally so with her pulling and me pushing we got baby B to a position that I started having contractions and the urge to push. With several more contractions we got baby B out, feet first... and a painfully huge head last! Again I did not hear a peep out of him. They wisked him over to the warming table where the NICU team from McMaster was already there and ready to take care of him. Within a few minutes they had him moving and on a ventelator. A few minutes later that placentas came out and I was moved to a maternity ward room while the NICU teams worked on stabalizing the boys.

Post Partum
** I'll finish this later because people are starting to get ansy to see pictures so I better get started on the next post***