So luckily for me, my twin pregnancy was (relatively) uneventful. The first 25 weeks were peachy, really. I gained about 60 lbs with the babies. As you can see in the illustration above, I made it a very deliberate point to document the pregnancy as best I could. Look at the jump in size between weeks 15 and 17. Look at how my stance gets gradually wider all the way to the end. I am so glad that I took the time to track my progress in time lapse.
Toward the very end however, I developed some mild high blood pressure, so I left my job at the Mountaineer Publishing Co. to go on bed rest. Bed rest sucks! By week 35, my mom traveled from the Piedmont to help out since Josh works 45 minutes away, and it was getting more and more difficult for me to maneuver and move around the house. I even needed help in the tub because once I was down, that was it! I remember one day when I was down on the floor cleaning out bunny's cage, and I thought that I was going to have to call Josh in from outside to help me off the floor!
It was a blessing to have my mom around to help me. In the last week of my pregnancy, it became too much to even sit up. Doing so made my blood pressure rise, and I was doing everything in my power to make it until my water broke on it's own. I had some fear that they were going to schedule me for a c-section, or try to convince me to induce because of my borderline pre-eclampsia. After going into the hospital on Chritmas Eve (at 33 weeks) with some false labor pains, I was still not dilated at all but having almost constant painless contractions. They ordered a fetal fibronectin test, which came back negative. I still can't believe that I made it a full 28 more days until my water broke! It was the longest 28 days of my life.
Mom helped me when the nesting phase hit and I was not able to get out of the bed. She helped organize the nursery and deal with the daily stuff around the house like cooking and cleaning and making sure the rabbit was fed. I stayed in the bed, and very occasionally on the couch until week 37 on the dot!
The week before the babies were born, I was into the doctor every other day until they arrived. On the Tuesday before, Dr. Modugno was suggesting that we schedule a c-section for Friday. I was not at all happy about it, so I agreed to come back in on Wednesday to discuss it with my regular doctor (Dr. VanDuuren) He was very awesome during the entire pregnancy with my decision to try to deliver twins on their own time and without intervention. He assured me that he had delivered plenty of sets of twins without problem, even when baby A was breech on some occasions. Ryah was indeed breech and was showing no signs of flipping. He agreed that Wednesday to let me hold out as long as I was monitoring my blood pressure frequently and would come in immediately if something alarming happened. My water broke that night!
So eeaaarrly on Thursday morning, around 3 am, I woke up to go to the bathroom, and as usual, it was torture getting out of the bed. It took all of the strength in my arms to lift myself up. I soon discovered that my water had broken! I told Josh and decided to lay back down, then get back up to make sure. It really had broken! The babies got to choose their own birthday after all!
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