No, I'm not pregnant. I have some friends who are, and that topic always makes me blush for some reason. Okay, it's not that pregnancy in and of itself makes me blush. It's the fact that I'm always reminded of the deliveries of my kids, and that makes me blush. With the exception of one -- RyBread, bless her -- I have plenty to blush about.
Never fear, I won't shock you with all the gory details. I'll just fill you in on the least embarrassing, the twins' delivery. While it's the one that makes me blush the least, it's the one that makes me laugh the most.
One terribly early morning in February, I was awakened by the alarming feeling of my water breaking...actually, I guess it would be more accurate to say that one of my waters was breaking. ...Never mind, let's move on.
Whenever I start this story with my kids, they always say, "What does that feel like?" How do you answer that? ...Uh...wet?
Anyhoo, I remember just kind of yelling, "Oh, oh, oh!"
Dave, who is never actually ready for an emergency in the middle of the night, outdid himself and jumped out of bed, yelling, "WHAT? WHAT?! What's wrong?!"
"My water just broke all over the place," I said, and he let out a burst of air and sighed, "...Finally!"
My thoughts exactly. People like to say a rather absurd thing to a woman carrying twins: "Wow, twins! Two for the price of one!" No. It is not two for the price of one, it is every bit, two for the price of two; and while every pregnancy is difficult in its own right, take each typical difficulty and multiply it by two. In many cases, you could add on doctor-prescribed bed-rest for who knows how long, non-stress tests, twice a week, for at least the last 8 weeks, a constant feeling that your body is being slowly ripped in two, and in my case, extreme itching of the palms of the hands and bottoms of the feet (go figure. But have you ever tried to satisfy an itch on the palm of your hand? It's physically impossible. I seriously thought I might go completely crazy some nights). Now you're getting the gist of carrying twins. So the idea that we were finally actually going through with this whole thing was, indeed, quite a relief.
We called my friend, who came to babysit (or really, just sleep out the rest of the night on my couch, as the bed was no longer an inviting idea to anyone), called my mom to let her get all excited about the next few hours, and headed off to the hospital.
Truthfully, I don't remember most of the details once we got to the hospital. It seemed like checking in took about 72 years, but that can't possibly be right, since their birthday has been recorded on the hospital and state records as the same date my water broke... I do remember how freezing cold I was as they prepped me for a C-section and gave me an IV. Not until I was shivering uncontrollably did someone get me one of those delicious blankets from the warming bins, and stuck a new, warm IV in. I also remember being a little nervous about the spinal anesthesia -- my first 3 kids were delivered without any meds, so that needle going into my back, while I was supposed to be calm and exhaling, was a bit unnerving. I know, Chicken.
I remember that as I was being wheeled into the delivery room, my little silly surgery hat fell down over my eyes. I laid there on the bed helplessly, since, of course, I couldn't move, and said, "Could someone fix my hat?" One of the nurses glanced down at me, and just kept on pushing my little bed. "Ok," I thought. "It's probably not important that I can see right now anyway." A few seconds later, someone pulled my hat back up to my forehead.
Of the actual C-Section, I remember 3 things: Dave almost got kicked out for crossing over the doctor's imaginary (but apparently very real to her) "do not cross" line -- he needed a better view. That was bad, but when he watched them stretch my skin apart with the those metal claws of pain and told me I was going to hurt in the morning, that really ticked them off. Please. if I didn't know I was going to hurt in morning, something was seriously wrong with me.
I remember when they brought Morgs around to show her to me (oh sure, they can cross the little line), I just couldn't believe how skinny she was. SO skinny. "Here's your baby girl!" they said. "Man, she's skinny," I thought. Tender, wasn't I?
Then two minutes later, they pulled out The Boy, and brought him around for me to see. He was obviously shorter than Morgs and was screaming the most pathetic little wide-mouthed sound I'd ever heard. More sentimentality from my groggy brain: "I had a frog," I thought.
And that was it. The next several hours were a blur of half-awake, groggy sleep; the kind where you don't really feel like you're sleeping, and when you are sleeping, you keep dreaming that you can't stay awake. I remember being so tired, but feeling a terrible need to stay awake because...what was it? I'm sure someone brought some sort of food or something in and left it by my bed...at least it seems like that could have happened. A very helpful nurse came in to check on me every so often, and finally told me I needed to remember to breathe. Really? Don't most people just do that automatically? I remember Dave coming in and telling me that The Boy had been having a hard time breathing. Huh. Me, too, apparently.
The days passed; the twins cried; we slipped into a weird new reality of life with five children, ages 5 and under; the twins still cried, I got used to missing twice as much sleep (two for the price of one -- Please!); and did I mention the twins cried? But it was good. We were a big little family, and happy in our sleepy, cry-ey new life.
Okay, I know what you're thinking. That's no big deal, what's there to blush about in that story? It is this: One day, several weeks after I had brought them home, I sat remembering the morning of their birth. I remembered Dave, and The Frog, and the Skinny Thing, and that stupid hat that someone had to push back up for me because my arms were... my arms... they...
There was nothing wrong with my stupid arms! They weren't numb, I could still move them around, even with the IV, they weren't pinned down to the bed or anything! I totally could have pushed up my stupid little hat! No wonder the nurse just kind of blew me off. She was probably thinking, "Push up your own hat, I'm pushing a bed here!"
There. That's my little blusher moment with the Twins. It's really nothing, I know, but I have a strong suspicion that the nurses were calling me "the idiot in room 3" for duration of my stay.
Oh well. I was ticked that they wanted to kick Dave out. They were ticked that they had to push my hat up. We'll call it even and move on.