My birth story…by Ami
At exactly 38 weeks on Thursday 10th of March 2005 we had an elective c-section. This was bought forward from the 15th of March after me begging my consultant – I had pre-eclampsia/hypertension from week 36 spending 6 days in hospital, and the babies were becoming to heavy for me to carry much longer.
Martyn and I drove to the hospital for 7.45am and were given a side room to prepare for the section, they talked me through the procedure and answered any questions I had. They took my BP, shaved my bikini line(!!) low in preparation for the cut and put me into the gowns (very fetching). By this time I was somewhat nervous but time was flying by. We then went down to delivery suite at about 10.15 to have the babies. It was really strange and I can’t really remember walking down there!
We then went into another side room where we would be recovering after the section and talked through the procedures finer points with the consultant. Martyn got into his scrubs then we all walked into the operating theatre, which was much smaller than I had ever imagined, filled with about twelve people and loads of machines and gadgets and the smallest bed in the world (I wondered if I would fit on it!) The anaesthetists then started putting in a cannula and preparing my back for the epidural. The epidural took a few attempts due to the oedeama I had towards the end of pregnancy, which was fairly unpleasant but once the injection was in it took effect really quickly. I was then helped into a lying position on the bed and the screen was put up. As I am only short the screen was right by my face so it was like Martyn and I were in a tent!
The surgeons got to work very quickly once it was established I was completely numb (lots of ice cube and pinching tests established this)! Martyn was by my head holding my hand and our Zero 7 CD was playing when at 11:16 twin 1 was helped into the world weighing 6lb 4oz, he came out crying and the first thing I saw was that he was most definately a boy! This was Maximilian Dominic, I held him virtually straight away and it was the most amazing thing in the world! Twin 2 came into the world at 11:18 weeing and crying, weighing 7lb 2oz, this was Oscar Jake he went straight to his Daddy, we had tears in our eyes by now! Oscar needed some oxygen before Daddy and both boys all went off to the recovery room to do the weighing and some skin to skin. I was then stitched up which took around 40 minutes and taken to join them in the recovery room, I then was able to have skin to skin time with both Max & Oscar which was fantastic.
Martyn and I were absolutely blown away by the entire experience! The babies had seperate sacs and seperate placentas so were non identical apparently the placentas were very healthy still which was great news. Then the surgeon came in and asked me about further blood tests, apparently there was so much liquid and blood the scalpel flew out of his hand flipped up and stabbed him in the arm(!?!) so both he and I had to have blood tests to ensure we didnt have any infections that could be passed to each other! After about 4 hours in the recovery room we were taken back upstairs to the maternity ward to get to know our babies. I was pretty zonked on morphine but it was the happiest day of my life, I spent the rest of that day with an inane grin on my face absolutely mesmerised by our babies.
Luckily Martyn is a very natural Daddy so he was able to do the more practical things but having said that we didnt do much other than sit, grin at each other and cuddle our babies!! 6 days and a blood transfusion later we came home. Just as I finished writing this Martyn came in with Oscar and his belly button has just dropped off (they are 1 week and 1 day old) ahhhhhh bless him! Ami & Martyn proud mummy & Daddy to Max and Oscar (non id boys 38 weeks 10/03/05)