How it all went down...(part two)

So, we're picking back up from yesterday.

They moved me to a labor room and I talked to the doctors about when we should call our families.  My parents live about 2 1/2 hours from the hospital and we definitely didn't want them to miss anything but we also didn't want them sitting in the waiting room all day Tuesday waiting for the babies arrive.  Dr. Gilner told me that I should probably go ahead and tell them to head this way because the babies were definitely coming and they were coming sooner rather than later.  With my blood pressure rising, they were going to see how things progressed.  But if things didn't progress quickly they would do something to move the process along.  So, we called our parents and told them to head to the hospital.

A little while after being moved to our room they came in and decided to break my water. They checked me before breaking my water and I was dilated to a 5.   An epidural was required in case of an emergency c-section on Baby B.  But, I had told my doctor that I really wanted a natural delivery so I wanted to wait until the last second to get the epidural. (I also was very adamant about trying to deliver the boys vaginally.  Which is often uncommon with twins - doc will tend to automatically want to do a c-section)

 Our parents arrived and my sister, brother and brother's girlfriend arrived and we filled them in on all the details.  I was so concerned at one point about not having any mascara on and about my face being buuuusteeed ("pregnancy glow" must be a myth....for realz).  So my mom and mother-in-law took a few minutes to "fix" me.  Which, you will see from the pictures afterwards, did not do a ton of good - I still looked rough.  But, for some reason I thought that some concealer and waterproof mascara were going to change my appearance from woman that just pushed out two babies to a cover girl ad.  Ahem, I was apparently confused.

(MiMi and Nonny)

So, annnnyway, I labored for about two hours after they broke "Baby A's" water and then they gave me the epidural.  Then they checked me about 30 minutes after the epidural and I was at a 10 and ready to push!  I think Dr. Gilner was quite surprised that I was at a ten.  She told me we had to go and we had to go right then.  That Baby A was about to make his grand debut and we better get to the OR...STAT :)  I begged Dr. Gilner to give me five minutes and she granted my request.  Our families came back in the room and prayed over me.  I just knew that I wanted God to be in the OR with us.  This was really about to happen.  We were going to deliver two baby boys.  At 32 weeks and 4 days.  And they were going to be taken to the NICU.  So I definitely needed all the prayers we could get.

Sidenote:  Praise the Lord for the dr. appt on Monday afternoon!  Since I was already in labor on Monday afternoon when I arrived, they told me I would have probably ended up at the hospital at some point in the middle of the night anyway in labor.  And, with how quickly everything progressed, we would have probably ended up having these babies in the car on the way to the hospital if we hadn't had the doctors appointment that afternoon!).

(Jordan in some tiny scrubs :)  They let him change into a different pair that were made to fit someone taller than 5 1/2 feet.)

After we prayed, they rushed me to the OR (again, just in case of an emergency c-section).  It was 5:30 a.m.  They went into turbo mode trying to get everyone ready because Crews was about to make his grand debut a little faster than thye were expecting.  There were lots of people in the OR.  A team for each baby and then medical students, anesthesiologists and a couple of OBs.  It was crazy in there.

I told Dr. Gilner that I hadn't taken any kind of class and she offered to give me the Cliff Notes version of delivery.  She give me a 2 minute overview explaining that one push is considered pushing for 10 seconds, taking a small breath, and doing that again two more times.   Then, after the two minute lesson, it was time to start pushing.

(Dr. Swammy, Me and my double chin)

(Dr. Gilner)

I pushed 1 1/2 sets of pushes with Crews and he arrived at 5:48 a.m.  They rushed him into the next room with one team of doctors.  They told me he weighed 1340 grams.  I asked how much that was in pounds and ounces and...dead silence.  No one could answer me.  Out of the twenty plus, highly educated people running around in the OR...no one could tell me. After a few seconds of silence, I asked "anyone?" and a doctor spoke up over to my left and said, I'm working on it.  She had a pencil and paper out trying to convert it.  They told me "umm...about 3 lbs.".  They checked him out and brought him back to the bed and let us meet him for the first time.  He was beautiful.  I was so amazed.  That he was mine.

(Seeing sweet Crews for the first time)

I only saw him for a quick second before it was time to start pushing again.  Tate arrived even faster than Crews.  I pushed a couple of times to get Tate to move down so I could start real pushes.  Then, I pushed one set with Tate and he came out squirming at 6:01 a.m.!  He didn't cry at the beginning but once they got him to the next room and started checking him out, I heard him start crying.  It was such a sweet noise!  Unfortunately they didn't get to bring him back to my bed because they had to take him straight to the NICU. Jordan help the door open as they wheeled Tate away so I could at least see him from afar.

(Jordan went to take a picture of Tate so I could at least see him on my camera!)

What an amazing blessing...an easy delivery!  It was the most amazing thing I've ever experienced.  I am still in wonder and awe of how our bodies are designed!  Jordan and I were both just so overwhelmed at the thought that those twenty little, perfect fingers and twenty little, perfect toes had been inside of me.  That's what we had been feeling move around in my tummy and here they were, outside of me!

(Us with Dr. Gilner - LOVE that woman!)

Okay, how about a part three?  I'll pick up with that soon :)

Hospital Trip One.

Okay, well...how about a little update :)

I've been MIA for a while and I wish that I had a better excuse!  Being sick for so long put me a little behind on lots of to-do items.  So, I've been spending my free time trying to get caught up.

Well, that is until last Tuesday.

I wanted to blog about this so I can remember all this down the road!  All the details are starting to run together and it's not even been a week!

I started having contractions Friday before last but didn't really get too worked up because I had heard about so many people having Braxton Hicks contractions throughout their pregnancy.

Jordan and I went with Heather, Christopher and Baby Hamilton out of town for Labor Day weekend.  While we were there, I continued having contractions.  I didn't really get too worried about anything until Sunday night when they seemed more frequent.  But then, on Monday, they calmed down again.

On Tuesday, at work, they started up again and seemed more regular.  I started timing them and they were every 25-30 minutes.  

When I left work Tuesday afternoon, I called my OB office just to make sure I didn't need to be doing anything.  The triage nurse suggested that I head to the hospital if I had more than four in the next hour.  Well, I was on my way to my dentist office for my six month check up so I went on to the dentist - and explained that I would probably need a quick cleaning - but they sent me on my way.  They quickly offered to reschedule my appointment :) 

So, I went and picked up Jordan and we ended up here:

They sent me straight up to the Labor and Delivery floor and started monitoring the babies' heartbeats and my contractions.  

Which, of course, we had to document for the blog :)

There are three different strips on me in this picture to monitor Baby A, Baby B and contractions.  But, Baby A was so low you can hardly see the band.  He was sitting on my right hip bone!

After monitoring me for a while, they told me that I was having more than just Braxton Hicks contractions.  They were actually very regular which was worrying them.  So, they gave me two shots of terbutaline to stop the contractions.  And they gave me the first steroid shot to develop the babies' lungs.

The next morning they let me leave the hospital and put me on strict bed rest.  They told me I could only get up to use the bathroom, take a shower and eat supper.  And that I had to lay on my side, completely flat.  They also told me that I had to come back on Wednesday night at 11:30 p.m. to get the second steroid shot in the butt :)

My new friend, Joyce, rolled me out to head home on Wednesday morning.

There's been a little bit of action since then - I'll have to post those details tomorrow.

But - for the most part, I've been laying in the bed and on the couch!

gender reveal party!

When Jordan and I found out we were preggers I knew I wanted to have a gender reveal party!  I've seen some super cute parties out there and I just knew it would be fun.

I ordered invites from Bear River Photo Greetings on Etsy.

I'm sure it's no surprise to most of you that I waited until really late to order them.  Thankfully, Angie was so great to work with.  She was incredibly quick with getting back to me.  And more than patient as I changed the wording on the invite a billion times!  Once I finally made up my mind, she sent me the jpg and I just had them printed locally.  It was perfect!

July 7th came and the day actually proved to be pretty stressful.  My mom and sister drove the 1.5 hours it took to come to the appointment.  And as they were pulling into the driveway, my phone rang.  It was the OB office.  Their system was down.  For the first time ever.  Nothing was working and they didn't anticipate the problem being fixed at all that day. 

We all held it together pretty well as we talked through what our options were.  We called my regular OB office {my appointment that day was with the high-risk clinic since there are twins}, we called the Durham branch of the same high-risk office, we called a few of those 3D/4D places where you can pay out of pocket, we called my previous gynecologist, and we called a friend who is a nurse at another OB office to see if they could fit us in. 

And then....after hearing no from lots of places and the cost of the other places....I had a breakdown.  Like a big, ugly cry right in the middle of MiMi's Cafe.  I was awful.  I couldn't seem to pull it together and in fact ended up yelling at Jordan and making the situation much worse than it really was.  There was just so much build up and I wanted that night to be perfect!  Of course this would not have been as big of a deal if we didn't have 40 people coming that night to find out the genders! 

So, finally...when I pulled myself together we decided to cancel the party. But then changed our minds again and decided to hold off and see if we could come up with another solution.  I had a regular OB visit that afternoon and was hoping that maybe, just maybe they'd be willing to work with me (even though they'd already told me no).  As I was going into my appointment, my mom was on the phone making best friends with an office manager at a different ob office.  Who finally said they could do the ultrasound as long as we paid for it out of pocket {ahem...not cheap!}.  Then, when I got called back for my checkup, I ran into my ultrasound tech in the hall.  I explained all the drama and she took one look at her calendar and said, come back at 4:30 and I'll squeeze you in! 

I started to think there was hope.  But then asked, well...what about insurance?  Will they cover it?  Not wanting to get my hopes up quite yet.  And she whispered, don't worry about it...we just won't charge you.  I've never been so excited in my life!  I almost kissed her feet right there in the hallway!  Well, not really...but  I probably would have! 

So, we went back at 4:30 and had the ultrasound and then flew to my parent's house to get ready for the party - that we thought we'd have all afternoon to get ready for - when we ended up only having 15 minutes to get ready!

Okay, enough talk...how about some pictures?

Here are the details from the party:

We served lemonade in mason jars with cute paper straws ordered from The Party Fairy on Etsy.
We made orange and yellow tissue pom poms using Martha's tutorial.
We bought some fun baskets and cake toppers at Hobby Lobby (we had to ice the cake ourselves because we found out so late that the bakery couldn't do it for us).
And we had tons of food!


Some of the guests:

Jordan's brother and sister and their families couldn't be at the party.  So we skyped them when it was time to cut the cake!


Everyone was instructed to wear colors based on their guess for the genders.


Orange (1 boy and 1 girl) was the majority by far.  (Yes, my shirt is orange-ish.  It looks more pink in pictures but I definitely thought it was one of each!)

The blue team:

My mom was convinced that it was two boys.  But she wore a dress that day to the appointment and didn't have time to change for the party because we only have 15 minutes to pull everything together before people started showing up!


And the pink team:

Clearly the minority.
And clearly Ariel was not happy about that :)

So we finally got to cut the cake.

And found out that we're having.......

Two boys!

I could not have been more shocked when we found out.  I was so sure that it was a boy and a girl.  After I got over the initial shock, I got so excited!

We are so thrilled and can't wait to meet these two precious boys that the Lord has blessed us with!


And, I have to tell you the story that Gretchen (Jordan's sister) told me a few weeks ago.  When they turned off Skype after finding out the genders, Gretchen asked her daughter, Emma Claire, what she thought about two boys....and she burst into tears!  She said she wanted a girl!  So funny and sweet :)  I'm sure she'll love these boys but she was definitely looking forward to a little girl.  Maybe next time, Emma Claire!


Hope you enjoyed the pictures :) Thankfully, Courtney was willing to make me a CD of her pictures because I didn't get my camera out the whole time!

when we told.

We found out in April that I was pregnant and decided to tell our families at Easter.

We bought giant eggs from Hobby Lobby and filled them with the Easter basket grass and candy.  We didn't want anyone to be suspicious - so we knew they'd assume this was just a little Easter gift.  When they opened the egg there was a paper taped inside the top of the egg. It had a picture of our positive test with the words:  "Baby Conklin Coming December 2011".

We spent Easter morning with my family and then went to Jordan's parent's house for lunch with his family. 

I will post pictures and other videos soon [I'm having trouble with the file formats] but I couldn't wait any longer to show this one.

And, I haven't been able to edit it, so it's straight from the video camera. 

Jordan was videoing.  He was trying to be discreet initially but we weren't expecting FMIL to open her egg as quickly as she did (she thought we brought it for the kids).  So it took him a second to get the lens cover open (the reason you can hear before you actually see anything).  Then, it gets a little shaky because he was talking and hugging while trying to keep videoing.

We are so excited.

And I would say FMIL is too, what do you think?

the reason.

So, I've been MIA.

...for months.

But, I've had a good reason, I promise!

I was incredibly sick.

I'm talking...unable to function kinda sick.

This kind of sick for three months.

But, it's all for a good reason because....

I've definitely got a lot of catching up to do!

Happy Monday!