They're here!!

Ok, they've actually been here almost a month, but I've had my hands full. :)

After all that hospital stay & bed rest I actually had to be induced, if you can believe it! I was induced at 39 weeks & 1 day pregnant, and the girls were born on June 9th.

Here I am right before we left for the hospital, bright & early on the 9th.

Things moved pretty quickly once we got to the hospital. I was still measuring about 3cm, they broke my water and started the pitocin around 8:30a.m. All the details are a little fuzzy but I received the epidural around 11:00a.m. At that point I wasn't feeling craaazy contractions, but opted to get the epi sooner than later since there were lots of deliveries that day & I would have had to tough it out at least another hour. Awhile later I was still feeling contractions and when they did another internal exam I could feel it just the same as the one from the morning.. at that point I was 5cm.

My doctor was surprised that I could still feel everything so she decided to have the anesthesiologist come back to check things out. It took awhile for him to come back and by that point I was feeling some pretty painful contractions. Once he got there he injected a large amount of the medicine in to me to see what happened.. I got super dizzy, my ears started ringing.. everything they ask if you're experiencing. This was the only moment of the whole day where I started freaking out a bit. They put an oxygen mask on my face, the doctor explained something about missing (or hitting?) a blood vessel, and got to work on re-doing the epidural. Ugh. At that point though I could care less. I was feeling really strong contractions so the 2nd epi was a piece of cake.

Around 1:30 I told my nurse I could definitely still feel contractions, but not as intense. She asked if I could feel them more in my rectum, and when I said yes she looked really surprised. She did another internal exam, looked up at me with huge eyes & said "you're at nine!". At this point I was soooo sleepy, so in between 9 & 10cm I was able to take a nap. :)

I was ready to start pushing around 2:30 and at that point a sea of people entered my room.. It was Dan, my two nurses, my obgyn, and probably 6 or 7 other doctors.. I don't know what each of them was there for, but at that point I could care less! I pushed for an hour and Emma Dylan was born at 3:30p.m, weighed 4lbs 14oz, and was 18 inches long. She cried right away and was whisked away to get cleaned up. I couldn't hold her right away since I needed to start pushing for Harlow, but they kept holding her up so I could catch glimpses of her, and at one point someone brought her over to me to give her a few kisses. :)

I naively assumed that Harlow would be much easier to deliver since you know, everything was already stretched out down there, but I was SO wrong! First off, I was exhausted already. So much that I could have slept in between contractions. Second, Harlow had further to go since she wasn't as far down. And lastly, she was the bigger of the two babies. Apparently she was also starting to flip, so the nurses were pushing down really hard on my stomach, which made me feel sick and definitely made pushing more difficult. My doctor kept telling me if I didn't want to have a c-section I'd have to push harder, and that was definitely motivation! Harlow Jane was born at 4:13p.m., weighed 5lbs 14oz, and was 19 inches long.

I did it! I delivered my baby girls vaginally, and everyone was as healthy as could be! Overall the experience was exactly as I hoped it would be. I got really lucky and had two amazing nurses who made SUCH a difference. One of them in particular kept telling me how great I was doing, and when she hugged me at the end of her shift, she actually had tears in her eyes. They were truly amazing. 

The last month has been sort of a whirl wind. I definitely have more to write about & many pictures to post, but I'll start with this birth story.

Here's a few pics of my beautiful baby girls:

The nurses..

Me & my girls..

Proud Papa..

Emma & Harlow, 1 day old..

Sister love (Emma on the left)..

Home sweet home!