A year ago I became a mom to two precious girls. Here’s our story:
September 28, 2016, 6:30am. My ob-gyn visits my room before beginning her rounds. She says based on my overnight blood pressure readings and the high-risk specialist’s notes, she wants my permission to perform a cesarean at noon. I give my consent and my husband starts calling our parents.
9:00am: A nurse enters my room to put in an IV port. The last time I had an IV I was 8 and it was for a tonsillectomy. I’m scared it will hurt (since it hurt a lot when I was 8) but thankfully it was just a normal needle prick.
11:00am: My nurse wraps my IV’d arm so that I can take a shower. I make sure I do every single possible shower chore possible because who knows when I’d get to shave again??
11:30am: Michael is given his scrubs and I’m wheeled off to the OR. He’ll join me once the spinal has been administered.
11:45am: The anesthesiologist misses my spinal cord and hits my spine proper. I’m screaming already and no one’s even taken a scalpel to me. Thankfully my nurse is holding me and comforting me.
12:00pm: My body is completely numb. You know that feeling of your leg being asleep and then blood starts circulating again? It’s like that, only in reverse. I began to panic as I could no longer wiggle my toes. I started feeling hot and nauseated. My vision began to go dark. I cried out to whoever was listening that I was going to faint and needed my husband. Next thing I know, Michael’s holding my hand and stroking my hair. I can’t feel anything, but I can tell my doctors were working on me.
12:27pm: Arlie Marie Bradley made her entrance into the world weighing 5 pounds, 8 ounces. I heard her first cry and my eyes began to water.
12:28pm: Zoey Grace Bradley followed her sister into this realm weighing 4 pounds, 4 ounces.
12:30pm: Michael was able to present both girls to me so that I could see them for a brief moment before they were carted off to the NICU (previously written about).
The journey that I had been on for 34 weeks was finally over. I was a mom.
Happy birthday to my sweet squishies!
Twin Mom 