thetadpoles.com

So yesterday sucked. I woke up early because my nurse came into to give me some meds. Since I was awake I thought I would write a post (kind of like now). Friday night I had been feeling a bit different, I called the nurse and talked with her but she didn’t seem concerned. It is hard when people give you vague symptoms, I know. I wasn’t having contractions, no fever and my vital signs were stable; I just felt different. I tried to put it out of my mind, I figured I’m just being hyper aware of everything. Then around 7:30 things started to get worse. I felt like I was having menstrual cramps and my back hurt. I got up to use the bathroom and it looked like I lost my mucus plug. I KNEW that was bad. The nurse came in and began to monitor the twins heart rates. I started to have contractions more regularly. I tried to stay calm but it is hard when things aren’t going well. Our nurse left and called Dr. Soffici. He was preforming a C-section but gave orders to give me a toradol injection, that was the drug they gave me before to stop the contractions. It didn’t work. The monitor showed I was having contractions every 4 minutes. The nurse went back to the O.R. to tell Soffici, this time they gave me 10 mg of Procardia (A heart drug that relaxes smooth muscle). It slowed things down a bit but did not stop the contractions. The nurses started another IV and hooked me up to fluids. I was told not to eat or drink anything in case I was rushed into surgery. By then Soffici came into the room, he looked grim. He said after looking at the monitor he could see my contractions had slowed down some but ordered another 10 mg of Procardia to see if that worked. He said when they had come into the O.R. to give him an update things looked “all gloom and doom”. They had been getting ready to move me to the labor and delivery side (I’m on the high risk OB floor now). I’m glad I didn’t know all that.

The Procardia worked and by noon the contractions had all but stopped. My Mom and Souther were there with us. Dr. Soffici came back in to see how things were going and to talk options. Even though the contractions had stopped we needed to be prepared for the worst. He then went over odds and we were told we needed to make a decision if the babies were to arrive within the next day or two. He used words like “bleak” and said “less than 50% survive and if they do all children born at 24 weeks have one or more disabilities. Blind, deaf, cerebral palsy, severe mental retardation.” Did we want heroic measures or let them go peacefully, how do you make a decision like that? As he was talking the babies were moving, it was horrible. We haven’t gotten the steroid shots yet. He said if we decided not to do heroic measures to save them the steroid shots would prolong the dying process, essentially they would suffer more. 10 years ago the twins wouldn’t have survived. It feels like playing God. Use medical advancements to try and sustain their life or let nature take it’s course. We are trying to think in the twins best interest and not just our own selfish wants.

We have such a hard road in front of us. We hear all these bad odds but then you read a story online of amazing survival. I wonder if our babies would be in the less than 1% group that would be ok, and what are those odds with twins? I don’t want to dwell on it or make any decisions. I feel like now that the contractions have stopped I can put it out of my head, though I know we need to be prepared for what may happen. We are meeting with the Neonatologist later today to talk about options.

Our hospital has a sacred space down by the ICU. I had seen it before when I oriented to the hospital, I have even sent family members of my patients there as a place to gather their thoughts. Yesterday Tadd went down there to pray for the twins. They have a basket of origami cranes made by school children. People can write messages on the wings and leave them in a special place there. Tadd came back with two cranes, a pink and a green one and placed them by my bed. He said he also wrote a prayer for the twins on another and left it in the sacred space. I don’t allow myself to cry often, I figure what is the point. I started to cry when he told me that, just as I am doing now. A couple of more weeks is what we need, I keep praying that we will get them.