A Planned C-Section

Corporate extension deadline. September 15th and the days leading up to it seem to get more and more hectic. 

The twins were due October 8th, but as twins take up substantially more room than singlets, the Doctor didn't want them to go past 38 weeks. September 22 at the latest.

Note: I'm playing the pronoun game here because we had no idea what their names were going to be. Before we knew it was twins the name was going to be Owen for a boy and Audrey for a girl. When we found out it was twins we decided we would keep those names if they were one of each. We came up with Audrey Jane and Grace Kelleen if they were girls. We didn't have names for 2 boys but we were pretty sure it wasn't 2 boys. Kel had a very different read on them than she did on Andrew (and she really wanted to experience the Mother-Daughter relationship from the other side).

We decided early on for some reason that Owen didn't work well with other boy names so we scrapped it and started looking for others. We considered (A/B) Gregory/Nathaniel (that was the front runner for the longest time...), Colin/Wesley, and a myriad of others. People would ask us what the names were and we would say it was a secret. It was secret for 2 reasons: 1 we didn't want to hear what people thought of the names we were considering (brain-mouth filters are unable to strain thoughts on names of in-utero babies for some reason) and 2 (and most importantly) WE HAD NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE GOING TO BE!!!

Kel went in to what we would later figure out was labor on September 11th. Contractions would only really hit when she was sitting, so logically, she avoided sitting. When she went in to see the doctor on Wednesday the 14th, the doctor told her that she would see her bright and early the next morning, because these babies are on their way out! Kel calls me at 4:00pm on the 14th. Great. Have fun without me, office! GL!

We told our neighbors, the Carls, what was happening and asked them if it would be OK for us to call them in the wee hours of the morning to what Andrew from the time we left for the hospital until the time Dad was over if her water broke that night. They were happy to help and as it turned out, we needed it!

The C-Section was scheduled for 9:00am that morning. Kel's water broke at 3:30. I called my Dad. "Lights, camera, action! We on! Get over here!" The same call to the Carls. And we're off!

The trip to the hospital was uneventful. I think I only ran one light. Carefully, of course. Kel stopped me from running the second. We got the hospital and things were pretty standard. We thought they would rush us into the OR a little faster; it was about an hour and a half before she got in. Apparently things would have been faster if she was laboring more intensely.

When the anesthesiologist came in he started giving us his little schpiel, after which I told him that I have a brief history of passing out during these things, but that I thought I would be OK this time. I feel good! He looked at me very suspiciously: Mr. Berg, you will be sitting in my chair.

The anesthesiologist we had with Andrew was an older gentleman with a weird sense of humor; not the kind you appreciate during a stressful situation. This guy was a lot more chill. He was a few years from middle-aged with long curly dark hair and, as Kel would later describe, very soothing eyes. She found his eyes to be very helpful in this situation.

I will post about Andrew's delivery soon if I haven't already. This experience was a stark contrast. Knowing what to expect and having recently rested made all the difference in the world. There was music playing; U2 and Coldplay if memory serves. When I came in and sat down next to Kel I told her "They fixed the gas leak!". The anesthesiologist kept us up to speed on what was going on.

When the time came I took a chance and leaned over to see Owen coming out. By the time I saw he was already out but I got to see Wes come out. My curious eyes got the better of me. The ring holding Kel open was about 8 inches in diameter; pretty impressive given the tiny scar she has from Andrew. The anesthesiologist touched my shoulder "you OK?" Yeah, fine!

Then I got brave again and told Kel I was going to go see them. I walked over and touched them in their bassinets, all gooey and everything. We put them in one bassinet so they could be together, sure enough they held hands! I got to cut their chords, and hang out for their weighing, all that stuff I was unable to do with Andrew. Then I looked back at Kel... from the other side of the screen! I watched her get stitched back together; stitch the stomach muscles and close the skin layer. The anesthesiologist saw me and said "Hey, Kyle! Yo! Eyes at me, huh? You OK?" Yeah! I'm great! That's really interesting... and went back to the boys.

There was no rush to get them to the nursery as there seemed to be with Andrew. They were still around after Kel was wheeling into the recovery entryway of the room. We hung out just the 4 of us in that recovery area for quite a while.

Kel's parents left late the night before to come up in time to be around when the boys were born. We called them on the way to the hospital to let them know what was going on. They still arrived in time to be there when they were born. Pretty cool.