Happy Birthday to Ryker and Averlee! Part 1

On Wednesday, December 3, 2014 at 6:34 and 6:35pm the world became a little sweeter. Ryker Christian Bell and Averlee Elizabeth Bell decided they didn't want to celebrate their birthdays on the day our doctor had scheduled my C-Section. Apparently December 3rd was more appealing to them! Here is their birth story...

On Tuesday afternoon, I began tracking contractions. I was having them about 12-15 minutes apart. They weren't awful. They were about as intense as the BH contractions I had been having for almost 10 weeks. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had already spent two nights in the hospital at 30 weeks due to threatened pre-term labor. During that hospital stay I was given two steroid injections to aid the babies' development along with magnesium sulfate to slow/ stop my contractions. Basically, I was tracking contractions on Tuesday but I didn't think anything about it because I felt fetal movement. As far as I knew, I had not lost my mucus plug and I did not have any bleeding. I assumed I was just having practice contractions. No big deal.

Tuesday night I slept all night long. Seriously. I only woke up once to pee. That's a huge deal when you have two tiny humans pressing on your bladder constantly. I woke up Wednesday, took Gavin to school, came home and just laid around until it was time to get ready for my weekly doctor visit. Trey was off work on Wednesday so he could run a few errands before our doctor appointment. When we were getting ready to leave the house, I told Trey I thought I would throw my hospital bag in the car just in case. I asked him if he wanted to put a bag in the car too. He said would just come get his stuff if he needed it. I was thinking we might have another over night stay in the hospital in our near future.... little did I know.

We had an ultrasound at 2:00 and a doctor appointment at 3:40. During our ultrasound, I was extremely uncomfortable. I've never wanted to rush through any of my bazillion ultrasounds, but I was completely over this one. I kept having contractions, which led to me having to roll over on my side off of my back. The tech told me Baby A - Ryker- was "very low". She also said Baby B - Averlee- was head down. I knew at this point that our days were numbered... little did I know.

When my nurse called my name to go back for my doctor appointment, I asked her if we would be doing a NST. I told her I was having frequent contractions. She said my doctor hadn't ordered one, but she would talk to my doctor and see what he said. When my doctor came in, he did not ask a lot of questions. He told us he was going to send us over to L&D to be checked and hooked up to the monitors. He told us we would probably go home that night, but we just needed to be checked out. 

So off we went to L&D. We made a few quick phone calls and sent a few texts, but we did not see any reason for everyone to rush to the hospital...little did I know. The time between the moment we got off the elevator on the 3rd floor of the hosptial and the time the twins were born was a complete whirlwind! When I was checked, the nurse started to prepare us mentally that we would be delivering soon. I was already at 5cm and the contractions were becoming stronger and more frequent. Ryker and Averlee were on their way and there was absolutely NO time to waste. Before we could even make a phone call to our parents and close friends, I had a room full of nurses trying to start my IV, draw blood for labs, and prep me for an emergency C-section. . . 

To be continued