It’s 6am. My hospital room is silent. I am by myself. The other
patients on this floor don’t get these moments of complete silence as often as
I do. The other patients on the floor often hear crying newborns near their
bedside. While I’ve been a mother for 48 hours now, I’ve not heard a single cry
from my babies. My babies can’t cry, yet. My babies aren’t with me, yet. My
babies haven’t been wrapped up in my arms and placed on my chest, yet. My
babies are preemies and are in the NICU.
Usually when I write blog posts, I kinda outline (in my
head) or map out what I’m going to say, what I’m going to leave out, and
sequence the events before I start typing. Not today. I don’t know where to
begin today or where to end. I don’t know what to say or what not to say. I
don’t know if I’ll finish in 15 minutes or 15 days. I’m starting, though, and I
guess that’s all that counts.
During the early morning hours of Friday, October 19, 2012,
I had no idea how much my life was about to change forever. For the couple of days prior to this morning,
I had been noting some different things going on with my body. There was some
extra cervical mucus when I used the bathroom and I had a tightening in my
uterus. After researching and talking to numerous people, I came to the
conclusion that I had been experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions. The changes
were noted and monitored, but were never a real concern. Then, Friday morning
between the hours of 2 and 4 am, I realized the contractions were getting
stronger and becoming a little more consistent-about 10-15 minutes apart. After
this realization, I woke up my husband and decided it was time to call my
doctor. I wasn’t scared or even nervous really. In my mind, we were going to
have to go to the hospital for a few hours and then hear the news I was
dreading at the time, “no more work—bedrest until you deliver”.
I spoke with my
doctor sometime between 4 and 5 am. At first, he was very relaxed and told me
he didn’t think I should go in yet with the contractions being 10 minutes
apart. Before we hung up, he confirmed my due date one more time, “and you’re
due date is October 28th?” Ummmmmmmmmmm…. Nope… January 26th,
doc! This made him change his tone a little. He told me to get to the hospital
and we’d take it from there. Still, I felt no panic or sense of urgency… they
were just going to give me a shot or something and I’d be back home by the
evening.
On the way to the hospital, I do vaguely remember telling
Dennis to try to hurry it a long a little because the contractions were getting
closer and more intense. By the time we’d reached the parking lot, I was
contracting every two minutes. You would have thought there would be bells and
whistles going off in my brain… still nothing. At 26 weeks, the last thing you
expect is to be doing is going into REAL labor.
Once in the hospital, we were sent to Labor and
Delivery-triage. I was told to give a urine sample, get in a gown, and that
someone would be in shortly to check and see what was going on. This was my
last moment of sanity. After the first and second person were checking me and
giving me the test to see if my water bag had broken, within minutes there were
8 other people in the room. Everything is blurry when I look back on it, except
for when a doctor sat down on my bed to talk to me. I don’t remember exactly
what was said. All I remember are the words “48 hours, crucial, delivery”. They
might not have all been in the same sentence, but those are the words I
remember. I then asked the doctor, “wait… does this mean the babies are going
to be BORN within the next 48 hours”. Her response was something along the
lines of “yes”. Like I said, though, I can really only remember a few specifics
from that morning. Within seconds of the doctor telling me that I was going to
have the babies soon, the neonatologist came in to speak with us. She talked
for a while and, again, I can’t tell you anything she said until, “do you have
any questions?” My one and only question was, “What are the survival rates?”
I’ll never forget her response, “60%”. Devastation and shock were taking over.
I looked at my husband, my rock, and tears were already falling down his face.
What the hell was happening to us?
When I came in, I was having contractions that were 2
minutes apart and I was dilated to 5 or 6. Unbeknownst to us, the NICU and
neonatologists were prepping for the arrival of our very early babies. We were
taken into an ultrasound room with an ultrasound tech and two high risk pregnancy
doctors The doctors didn’t sound hopeful and I felt like the ultrasound tech
felt sorry for us. Up until that moment, I was strong enough not to find out
the genders of the twins even though we were dying to know. Something inside me
told me to find out who they were and give them their names. I felt like I
needed to start praying for my babies as individuals... as “real” people. The
tech shortly confirmed what I’d known in my heart since our first ultrasound
where all we could see were little spots: Baby A was a girl and Baby B was a
boy. Happiness and sorrow filled my heart at once. Was this it? Was I going to
name these babies right then and then have them be nothing more than memories
of what they felt like on the inside? It’s what it felt like at the moment and
it was certainly how everyone around us seemed to be acting. The tech told us
she would give us a minute of privacy and that’s when Dennis and I confirmed
our sweet babies’ names. Baby A, our sweet princess, would be Violet Laurie.
Violet was a name I came across a few months ago and just could not shake. It’s
delicate and beautiful, but felt solid, as well. Laurie came from my
aunt/godmother. Laurie battles breast cancer everyday of her life and has
proven to our family that miracles do happen. She is a fighter. She is one of
the strongest women I know. At this point we knew that Violet was going to have
a tough road ahead regardless of what happened and we knew that she deserved to
be named after someone amazing. Our sweet Violet Laurie had been given the
perfect name. As for our precious Baby B… my impossible to photograph in the
ultrasound because he’s so crazy little boy… we chose Cameron Patrick. Cameron
is my maiden name. I’ve always loved my former last name and felt that it not
only sounded good, but it represented my dad’s and grandpa’s history. Patrick
was Dennis’s dad’s name. While I never had the opportunity to meet his dad,
I’ve heard a lot about him and I KNOW he’s one of the reasons Dennis has turned
out to be an amazing person, husband and now father. There was never a doubt in
our minds that we were going to use this name to honor the memory of his dad.
Another baby was about to receive the perfect name.
Watching my husband cry tears of fear and sadness was
something I wasn’t used to… at all. As I watched the tears roll down his cheek,
I just kept thinking, “What is going on? What is happening to us? Is this
real?” I still can’t believe the answers to the questions I had. I will never
be able to recall exactly what happened the rest of that day. Perhaps my mind
blocked it all out. Perhaps when they put me on the high dosage of the
magnesium to stop labor my brain stopped working. Perhaps I just left my body
for a while. I’m not sure, but as I said, I can only remember bits and pieces
of the misery that was to be the next few days.
We were told repeatedly that day that it was essential to
keep them in for at least 48 hours. This way, the babies would get the steroids
they needed to develop their lungs and increase their survival rates. Because I
was so dilated and my water bag was “bulging”, I was put on strict bed rest
in the hospital until I delivered. We
were put into a rather large room with our own bathroom, small couch and a
delivery bed. This would be our home until our babies arrived. With no answers
, no end in sight, and no positive information from the doctors our situation
looked incredibly bleak.
Instead of making this one reeeeally long post, I’m going to
post this and then continue writing later. It’s been hard to find a time to sit
and do this. Next post will be along shortly.
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