Two months ago, on Tuesday, September 14, 2004, God blessed my family and I with two beautiful angels, William Nathaniel and Keisha Nicole. Thirty eight long weeks end with bundles of joy weighing in at 6lbs 12oz, 20 1/2 inches in length and 6lbs 5oz, 19 1/2 inches in length respectively.

My so called labor began the Wednesday after Labor Day. JT and I went in for a routine weekly doctor appointment. My doctor decided to send me across the street for a follow up in labor in delivery because my blood pressure was high and the nonstress test (NST) showed that I was having regular contractions. Only days before this, I had visions of my doctor sending me across the street after an appointment… only in my vision things were a lot more dramatic. The receptionist called someone over to wheel me across the way. The two buildings are connected by a closed walk way over the street, so we didn’t have to go outside at all.

The labor and delivery (L&D) evaluation room of the hospital is the most frustrating place a pregnant woman can be in. L&D is the place where a pregnant woman goes for everything wrong relating to the pregnancy except for the pregnant woman who is in actual labor. If you are in actual labor you go straight to a delivery room. The problem with L&D is that you wait, wait, wait, wait and then you wait some more. Then, someone straps the heart rate and contractions monitors to you, asks a bajillion questions (which includes the health history of my entire family), a nurse takes your blood pressure… then you wait, wait, wait, wait and wait. You can see the theme here right?

Unless the baby is crowning out of your vagina, you are pretty much going to wait.

And wait we did.

At thirty seven weeks pregnant (at that time) with twins, any possible labor was not going to be considered pre-term labor. The most recent ultrasound determined that both babies were a healthy weight (estimates showed about six pounds for each child), amniotic fluids were in tact and both babies were vertex (head first). My daughter was previously vertex oblique (head first, but body is laying curved across the uterus), but that week she moved to a complete vertex position. So since I wasn’t at risk for pre-term labor, JT and I didn’t have to worry about the doctors giving me medication to stop the labor.

In L&D your room is three walls and a curtain… so you can pretty much here everything that is going on in the other evaluation rooms and nurses and doctors talking about patients. Yeah, they whisper and what not, but I had strong enough selective hearing to know when they were talking about me. Pretty much everytime I heard the word twins, my ears shot straight up. I could hear the residents and nurses discussing my contractions. I was now hooked on the IV with fluids that prevent you from dehydrating. Damnit, I really hate IVs… If you don’t get a nurse who knows what she is doing, she can really fuck up your hands and arms. I just had to let you know that. :hip:

A couple of hours after arriving in L&D, my doctor decided to send me into my own delivery room. I remained at only one centimeter dilated, so we decided to augment my labor with pitocin.