36 weeks and beyond...

So I have quite a lot to catch you up on. As you guessed from the lack of posts since 35 weeks, the babies are here. On Friday, October 21st I started to just really lack energy and could just not get comfortable. I by Saturday morning I was really feeling it, but thought that maybe it was just from an eventful morning walking around downtown Naples taking Christmas photos of one of my best friends Melissa and her beautiful family. Maybe "walking" isn't the right term. Waddling and acting like I wasn't exhausted is much more accurate.

So Saturday afternoon I napped and sat in the yard with the dogs watching Nate do a little planting. Suzanne (Nate's grandmother) stopped by and brought us some yummy cookies and visited for a while. Shortly afterwards I went back inside and took my blood pressure. It was much higher than normal and I was starting to feel a little nauseous.  I called the doctor on call and they said if it went any higher to go to the Birth Place for monitoring. Terrified, I went right to bed and laid on my left side and proceeded to down water and snack. Nate packed the baby bag that I had been procrastinating and then we relaxed together watching movies and talking about the babies. My blood pressure stayed around the same - fluctuating here and there.

I decided if nothing was better I'd call my actual doctor on Monday morning and check in.

So Monday morning, nothing was the same. Sent a note to my boss saying I'd be in a little late, that I needed to check in with the doctor. I heard back from my doctor a little later and she said go in to the Birth Place to get monitored. She assured my I'd be there for about an hour - maybe at the most overnight. Nate quickly added some music to my iPod (Gungor <3) and then off we went.

All hooked up on the monitors, we found out that 1: yes my blood pressure was high and 2: I was having contractions. Who knew? So that was kind of fun. I was still thinking we'd be home that day. After all, the doctor had been saying the whole time I'd go to 40 weeks and deliver them myself. No photos from this monitoring will be shared, but looking back on them is hilarious.

Roughly an hour later my OB enters the room with a smile and says "who's ready to have babies today?"! Umm.... really??!! OK. So the whirl wind began... checked in to a room upstairs and around 5:30 was prepped for a c-section. My thoughts - not sure. It was just all so surreal. Mom and Becky both came to keep us company until it was time.

Finally, after a story you should never share with someone going in to have a c-section given by the student aesthetician,  the doctor came in and off we went to the operating room.

That in it's self was an experience, and not a pleasant one. They had me climb up on the coldest table ever in a room that was literally 50 degrees and no one even paid attention to me or told me what was going on until it was time for the spinal epidural. "Look down and don't move" is a lot easier said than done and it is NOT a little sting. It hurts really bad. After they got me all situated in came Nate.

He had my iPod and stuck one of the buds in my right ear and sat down to the left of my head. Gungor's "Beautiful Things" was playing and two minutes later out comes Addisyn Grace with her little "meow" cry weighing 5.5 lbs, 18 inches long at 6:35 p.m. - Gavin Harwick was next at 6:36 p.m. weighing 6.5 lbs, 19 inches long. That was the amazing part. It is incredible that  you can automatically love something when you just hear its voice.

Addison Grace

Gavin Harwick

Sweet babies

Needless to say, born at 36 weeks exactly, they were both perfectly healthy, happy babies and we are so thankful for God blessing them in that way. They did not have to spend any time in the NICU.

Nate was beyond amazing in the hospital! I can't even tell you what a wonderful daddy he has been. He paraded the babies all around, showing them to everyone at the hospital and getting lessons from all the nurses on swaddling, changing and anything else he could think of.  He also did an amazing job taking care of me, and I am so blessed and thankful that God has blessed me with such an awesome, Godly man who is so loving and caring.

Our family - October 24, 2011

After the c-section I was put on magnesium sulfate for 24 hours which was horrible. The nurses on the observation floor were about 100 times better - but for most of the time I had double/triple vision and really don't remember much. Including some visitors and conversations with nurses. Some of our photos I'm not even looking in the right place. I was happy when they took me off of that stuff and moved us up to the recovery floor. We had a few "head-butts" with one of the nurses... but it was overall nice to not be woken up every 30 minutes for check-ups and move to being examined every two hours.

On October 27th both the babies and I were discharged to come home. I've gotta say it was a little nerve racking to come home with both babies not really being able to move around very much, but at the same time it was nice to finally be in our own environment doing things our way.

Heading home!

When we came home, my mom and Becky were here to help us. It was so nice to have the support of our families. The babies were so beautiful. They were great sleepers, hardly cried and were pretty alert. They stayed that way until about 6 weeks - then that changed, but I'll save that for a later post. :)

Well, that's about all the writing I have time for now. Time to feed again.

More to come next time a get a few seconds.