{And then there were 5}

Wednesday 2.1.12--the day we went from parents of 1 to parents of 3 :)

We could not have hoped for a better experience. My doctor has said over and over that she has never had a twin delivery go so smoothly. We are so thankful for this after a LONG and difficult pregnancy.

This is Will & Rdyer's birth story :)

On Wednesday (2.1.12) morning I called triage and quickly got the SAME response I had gotten the Saturday before..."we are full right now, call back at 9am and we should be able to get you in this afternoon."

I had just gotten out of the shower, dried my hair was READY to head over to the hospital. The bags were all ready (AGAIN) and I was not about to be told I had to wait another day!

I had just told Andrew the news and was holding back tears when my phone rang. It was triage calling back, less than 5 minutes later. They "suddenly" had room for me and told me to come in at 7am. I later found out that my doctor had called in right after me and found out they were not taking me. She was NOT happy! Love my doctor. LOVE.

As we left the house to head for the hospital we snapped one last picture of us as a family of 3. I started to tear up as we said goodbye to Judah. I was so worried about how everything would affect him. Would he still know how much we love him?! Would he know it would never change?

We showed up at 7am sharp and were escorted to one of the beautiful new birthing suites. We just kind of hung out with our nurse for an hour or so, answering lots of ridiculous questions. Then at 8:30 my doctor strolled in to give the go ahead to start my antibiotics (I found out I was step B positive). I had to have 4 hours of antibiotics in before they could break my water. I was already 5cm with stronger contractions, so they were hoping I could make it the 4 hours.

The morning was pretty uneventful. Judah came up and hung out with us a few hours. He was pretty scared of the big hospital room and seeing me in the hospital bed. He quickly warmed up when the nurses started talking to him & gave him a big brother sticker :)

At around 1, when the antibiotics had finally gone through one round, my doctor came back and said it was time to break my water! She was sure once my water broke things would move quickly.

And they did.

Within an hour and a half of breaking my water I told Andrew I thought it was time! I paged my nurse and the resident doctor came quickly to check my progress. I was 10cm! Andrew had a HUGE smile on his face and grabbed my hand and said, "here we go!"

My heart was beating SO fast. Suddenly the room flooded with people. They had to get me to the OR to deliver. Before I knew it Andrew was dressed in scrubs and we were rolling down the hall to the OR.

The OR was really intimidating compared to the softly lit, comfortable birthing suite. It was HUGE. The lights were bright and there were SO many people in the room:

-MY OB

-2 Resident doctors

-My birthing room nurse plus 4 others

-4 NICU nurses

-2 Pediatricians

-An anesthesiologist/ photographer :)

-A few other random people that I am still not sure of why they were there, but at that point I just didn't care anymore!

The bed in the OR was so narrow and uncomfortable. I was afraid I would fall off when I started pushing!

The nurses were all loving Andrew and his enthusiasm :) He was all smiles and just so excited to meet his new little boys.

My doctor seemed annoyed with all the people hustling around and kept insisting that we really did not need them all there, even though she knows they have to be. She's too funny.

Within 10 minutes of being in the OR my doctor gave me the go ahead to start pushing. All I could think about was how badly I just wanted to BREATHE again! That was my motivation to push the first baby out :)

The anesthesiologist quickly turned photographer grabbed our camera from Andrew and told him to enjoy the moment and he would take care of the pictures! What an amazing guy!

About 15 minutes later Ryder was born. I could not believe how sweet and small he was. He looked so much like Judah did, but a lot tinier. As Andrew and I were cuddling our new son my doctor reminded me that we were not done yet! :) What a strange feeling...to deliver you baby and realize that there was one more still to come!

As they were weighing and checking Ryder over I had to concentrate on pushing again. It was so hard to do when all I wanted to do was look over at what was going on with Ryder. Andrew had followed the baby over to the warmer and seemed to have forgotten his job of helping me :) One of the nurses ushered him back to my side.

Before I started pushing I asked my doctor how long it usually was between births. She said "anywhere between a couple minutes to 6 hours."

I was not about to push for 6 more hours and started to push as hard as a I could. Everyone was saying, "whoa! WHOA! Slow down, hold on just...here comes another baby!" It seemed like only a few seconds went by, but from the time of Ryder's birth to Will's birth it was 17 minutes...so I maybe pushed 5-10 minutes! It was awesome. I swear delivering twins was EASIER than my delivery with Judah! It just happened so fast.

When I first saw Will I was blown away by how different he and Ryder looked. He was SO precious and so tiny too. Just as he was in the womb, he was so quite and peaceful with the sweetest little cry. We were in love.

As they took Will to be weighed everything finally felt real. We just had twins. We have two sweet little babies! After 9 months of an incredibly difficult pregnancy I had my reward...and it was SO worth it. I would do it again in a second.

Here is our first picture with both boys:

{Andrew is holding Ryder & I have a just born Will}

Both boys were 6 lbs 13 ounce! The whole room started laughing when they announced it! They were also only 1/4 of an inch apart in length!

Everyone in the room was beaming. We were so thankful of such a smooth, easy delivery. It was the perfect start to our family of 5 :)

I felt great afterwards and was walking around really quickly. I remember feeling so much more tired and sore after having Judah. This time I hardly felt like I had given birth.

We called my dad, who was not able to be there, first and told him the babies' names. We wanted him to feel special and be the first to know their names. We had named Will after him. (More on why we chose their names in a later post).

After talking to my dad, my mom , sister, Andrew's parents and Judah came in the room to meet the babies. Judah was thrilled! Shortly after they came in a few friends followed and Judah exclaimed, "BABIES! BABIES! BABIES!" He was jumping up and down and so excited to show off his new brothers. Thank you Mandy, Carolyn and Mitch for coming to meet our boys!

When everyone left and we moved to our recovery room we finally had a moment to stop and be thankful for what a blessing the day had been. We were just in awe of our 2 sweet boys and stayed up way too late cuddling them. One nurse scolded us and told us we better get some sleep while we had a chance. But, we didn't care, we were so happy and would have stayed up all night.

To celebrate we ordered Chili's take-out :) I had been craving it for so long and was not able to enjoy it because of my gestational diabetes...it felt SO good to be able to eat what I wanted again!

Thank you to everyone who kept us in your prayers that day and for so much of my pregnancy. We could feel God answering them all along.