Our OB, Dr. Patricia Lanter is fantastic. For the last month or so, Hillary had been seeing her once a week. Because we knew that one of the babies was sitting breach, and the other was laying transverse across his brother, in sort of a wrestling hold; we were pretty much guaranteed that a C-Section was coming. In fact, at this appointment on Tuesday, Dr. Lanter said we should start thinking about scheduling a date so we could decide on one at our next appointment.
Our neonatologist appointments were usually twice a week for the last month, one to see the neonatologist, Dr. Jadali, and on to see the cardio-neonatologist, Dr. Tabibian. There were a couple of concerns that they were keeping an eye on. The amniotic fluid in baby A’s sac was getting low so they wanted to monitor that regularly, and there was a question about baby A’s heart. Every time they tried to get good ultrasounds of baby A’s heart, baby B would be right on top of him. After this appointment, Dr. Tabibian had decided that they just weren’t going to get good pictures, and that they would have to have it done after the babies were born in February.
I had to fly late Tuesday night, so I only went with Hillary to see Dr. Lanter. My dad took her to see Dr. Tabibian. I got home about 9pm on Tuesday and we went to bed.
On Wednesday January 13th, 2010 at 3:30am Hillary woke me up to let me know she thought her water broke.
I checked.
It had.
Now, the babies were originally due on February 14th and Dr. Lanter had adjusted the due date to February 20th, so we were at 34+ weeks, or about 6 weeks early (more on that later).
We called into our baby-delivering doctor, Dr. Lanter, got the on-call doctor, Dr. Keefe, and got ready to head to the hospital. Called Hillary’s mom to let her know, called my mom and dad to let them know, texted Amanda to have her call me when she got up, and called my boss Jimmy to let him know that I didn’t think I was going to make it into work.
We got to the hospital at about 4:00am-ish, got settled into the room, checked in, hooked up, and all that other hospital stuff. Dr. Keefe said that everything was all scheduled for a noon C-Section and that all we had to do was sit back and relax.
At about 7:30am, Dr. Lanter came in to check in on Hillary. Up until then, Hillary hadn’t had any contractions and was 0cm dilated. Then all of a sudden, boom, contractions and she went to 3cm dilated just like that. Dr. Lanter said we weren’t waiting and that we were going in now. Hillary got prepped, I got to don this lovely outfit, Hillary got her spinal tap and next thing you know, they call me into the OR to join Hillary and at 8:20am we started.
The whole C-Section thing was kind of surreal. Hillary is lying on her back, I'm on a stool next to her head, there’s a big curtain that runs across her chest that blocks the view of all the action down below so you don’t see exactly what is going on. Just a bunch of doctors and their teams doing doctor stuff, using doctor words and the next thing you know you hear “here comes the first one”, baby crying, “here comes the second one”, baby crying and bada-bing-bada-bang we’re the parents of twins.
Reagan Lorne Poulsen was born on Wednesday January 13th at 8:49am. He weighed 5lbs 6.7oz and “stood” 18.5” tall.
Landon Douglas Poulsen was born on Wednesday January 13th at 8:50am. He weighed 6lbs 13.8oz and “stood” 19.5” tall.I got to hold Reagan for a few minutes and show him to Hillary. I got to do the same with Landon. Since then, that is the last time we’ve been able to hold them.
After I cut both umbilical cords, Reagan and Landon were whisked off to the Neonatal ICU (NICU) and have been there ever since. Because they were 6 weeks early, their lungs haven’t fully developed properly, so they can’t breathe completely on their own, so they are both on ventilator tubes in incubators. We can go in whenever we want to see them, but we just can’t hold them yet. As you can see by the pictures, it’s a mess of tubes running everywhere. Probes, breathing tubes, tubes to suck the fluid out of their stomachs. It’s all not unexpected for premature babies, but it’s still not what we had hoped for.
I went to pick up Amanda and take her out of school early so she could come to the hospital and see her brothers. She has been super excited during the entire pregnancy and was really looking forward to being a big sister.
In the NICU, Reagan and Landon have dedicated nurses, a respiratory therapist, the on-call pediatrician, a cardiology-neonatologist, and their personal pediatrician, Dr. Coppa; all keeping an eye on them. I go in every few hours and hang out with them for a bit; check in on them, talk to them, get all the latest updates from the pros.
Hillary finally got to see them earlier today. After the C-Section, she was pretty much confined to the bed recuperating. This morning she was able to get up out of bed and wheelchair-ed down to the NICU to see her boys. Hillary is now disconnected from all the machines, no constant vitals monitoring, no more IV, no more catheters, no more leg pumps (to keep the blood circulating) and is comfortable sleeping on her back for the first time in a very long time. In fact as I write this, she’s taking a little nap (and snoring a little bit too). We are looking at Sunday the 17th as a discharge date.
Reagan and Landon are going to be here in the NICU for a while, at least another week or so. The folks in the NICU always want to keep preemie babies until their due date (6 more weeks!?!?!?!?!?), but Dr. Coppa is going to make sure that they don’t have to spend any more time in there then they have to. So we are looking at about another week to ten days before they get to come home.
It will be sad going home without the boys, but it is what it is, they need to be stronger before they can come home.
Thanks to all who have called, emailed, stopped by and sent flowers, it is all very much appreciated.
More to follow,
Phil
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