My Twins First Week on Earth…

Recap of ‘Giving Birth to Twins…’  

So this post picks up from where the last post (READ HERE) ended…

If you still haven’t read it, the summary is that I had just given birth to my boy/girl twins, at 34 weeks gestation in hospital…

It was a party, and it was now over…

Immediately for Bubs…

So after having my brief cuddle, being assured the babies were going to be ok, and taking a few family snaps, the bubs were quickly rushed into the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), where they were weighed, had tests done, were hooked up to monitors and had tubes put down their noses into their stomachs!

It was pretty intense.

Peter went with them to make sure that they didn’t get mixed up with each other (lol, they were boy/girl), or any other babies…(semi serious – have you heard those stories?)

Immediately for Me…

I was super glad I had my SIL Trini there to keep me company, as everyone else pretty much left the room. It was almost like I had done my job and they no longer had any use for me.

The lovely Indian registrar finished her shift and went home, the nurses dissapated and the baby’s doctors obviously went to the NICU with the twins. It was like everyone saying to me, ‘Great party! Let’s do that again!’, meanwhile, I was left with the trashed house and all mess to clean up!

Peter eventually came back and tried to make me watch ‘White Collar’ on the ipad as the new registrar on duty was stitching me up! Needless to say, I had to rewatch that episode! I don’t care how good the show is, if someone is stitching up your who-hah, nothing is going in to your brain!

And then the first shower…

Wow…it was nothing short of amazing!

I was a bit wobbly on my feet from the epidural, so it was good to have help. And it was so nice to wash everything off and be clean again! So, so nice!

By this time it was around midnight, and I went to visit my little angels in the NICU…

The NICU Setup…

The NICU is an incredible place, where sick or premature babies go, until they are ready to go home.

I’m not sure if every NICU is set up the same, but ours was long and narrow… When babies come in and are assessed, they come into one end. This is the really intense end. The end with louder beeps and more computer screens. There are more drips and gadgets and boxes in this end, as this is where the babies start.

As they get stronger and healthier, they progress along the room, across to the other side where there are fewer monitors, until there are no monitors at all, and they are just having the hourly nurse’s checks like a normal hospital patient.

Baby 1 and Baby 2’s Conditions

When I came in that night, my little babies had chords coming off them everywhere. It was quite scary, until I realized most of the chords were held on with stickers! Phew!

These stickers monitored their heart rate, their oxygen levels and possibly blood pressure?

We were very lucky that both babies were breathing on their own after they were born, so that was a great start!

Tori had a fair bit of jaundice, and so was kept under ultra violet lights for a good week or two. She was so cute! It was like she was sun baking with her eye covers and nappy and nothing else. However I remember feeling like I wasn’t bonding with her as much as Wally, as I wasn’t able to touch her as much. So that made me a bit sad.

As they were early, their sucking mechanisms hadn’t fully developed yet, which meant they couldn’t latch or suck for very long, hence the tubes into their stomachs.

I remember feeling embarrassed that my babies had to go here and have so many tubes and monitors and look so fragile. I didn’t want Peter to put any photos of them on Facebook with the tubes, as I thought it was too scary for people to see.

How stupid and wrong I was!

They were so beautiful! I mean, seriously, look at them!!!

I got over it pretty quick as Pete is a social media guru, and he was texting a HUGE list of family and friends, birth updates and posting photos of the new bubbies EVERYWHERE. That day, our kids had their own Facebook page, their own email accounts and goodness knows what else…! Can’t keep a proud Daddy down I guess!

Can you see how small they were?!

This is Pete’s hand on Wally. Given, Pete is a giant walking among men, but Wally was so teeny tiny!

If you have ever seen a ‘Huggies’ newborn nappy, they are pretty small… As you can see here on Tori, we had to fold the tops over at the front. They were huge on them!

They had to be wrapped in so many blankets, and wear beanies to keep warm enough! You loose a lot of heat through your head! Doesn’t she look like a doll?!

By this time, I was pretty exhausted, so I went to bed, in a hospital room, without my babies, for the first time in seven and a half months. ?

The Spinal Headaches

The next morning was the beginning of a week from hell for me. I was hormonal, I was in one room while my kids were in another, I was worried sick about them, and to add to that, I had Spinal Headaches from the epidural. 0.02% of people get these. I hope it isn’t you! I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy! They are like death!!!!!! They occur due to the epidural needle puncturing your spinal chord, which lets your spinal fluid drain, and thus it drains your brain fluid, so your brain doesn’t have as much fluid to float in. Yeah. Ouch!

I couldn’t stand up or walk for very long, so seeing my babies was quite difficult. I was often wheeled in a wheelchair. Lying down was best…

I was on Nurofen and Endone tablets but they didn’t even make a dent in the pain…

They offered me a procedure called a ‘Blood Patch’ which can fix the headaches, where they take some blood out of your arm and immediately inject it next to your spinal column. The blood is supposed to work like a band-aid and ‘patch’ up the hole.

We did the procedure on the Monday afternoon, after which I had to remain lying down until the next morning.

I was so excited! When I opened my eyes the next morning, my headaches were gone! I was downright gleeful! I stood up, ready to take on the world, when all of a sudden a huge hammer of pain smashed into my brain, and I literally fell back into my bed!

I was devastated! I just lay there and sobbed. They said that the headaches could take up to four months to go away, and I couldn’t even handle two days! What was I going to do?!

The Rollercoaster NICU

When I went to see the twins, they were going a lot better than I was! In order to conserve their energy, we were only allowed to pick them up if it was time to change their nappy. Otherwise, they would use up too much energy being picked up, held and passed around. So that was a bit tricky. We just wanted to give them so many hugs!

Here Pete was able to give Wally a quick hug after changing his nappy.

Tori was under lights or in a humidi-crib, and Wally was in and out of humid-cribs, but as the days went by, they began to make their way down the NICU, towards the ‘Good’ end. It was really lovely to watch.

However, one day Pete and I came in, and to our horror, both babies had gone backwards! Their beds had been wheeled back to the more intense end of the NICU, and they both had cannulas in their arms. Actually all three of us had matching cannulas by this point!

They were both given antibiotics, which broke my heart. They were so tiny and fragile! I couldn’t believe their little bodies had to go through so much so soon!

I know I make it sound like it was a horrible time, and it was a very scary, up and down, highly emotional and draining experience. However the NICU nurses were so amazing! They were competent, they didn’t show any fear – which really helped me, and they really comforted us, and let us know that everything was going to be ok.

To this day, the smell of the hospital soap that you have to use before you can be buzzed into the NICU, still sends me a flood of happy memories. It’s as happy as the smell of fresh bread now lol! It’s like, amidst the crazy of a premature baby (or two), the NICU was a refuge and a place of peace. An extension of heaven.

Breastfeeding

Before the breastmilk comes colostrum. The honey coloured, nutrient dense substance that babies drink until day three, when the tide comes in. However my bubs coundn’t suck it out, so we would express, and collect it with a syringe. It was as difficult as gold mining in space for me!

One morning, I woke to my alarm at 3am to express, and felt so sick that I desperately needed help to do it, so I called the nurse. To my horror, a male nurse came. I was so embarrassed! But he happily obliged. Yes, sooooo awkward! That just shows how sick I was! Later on in the week, Peter was helping me express every time!

So my babies were fed formula and my colostrum for the first three days, until…

My milk came in!!! Aaaaaarghhhhhh!

Ok, so I’m normally a C to a D cup, but wow, I wasn’t quite ready for the F cups which grew overnight to replace them! It was interesting and horrific at the same time! And painful!

Breastfeeding my babies was amazing! And incredibly challenging! My flow was too fast for them, they couldn’t suck very long, sucking would make them lose too more energy than they were drinking, they needed to burp every fifteen seconds, oh, and there were two of them! It is also quite tricky to get all the pillows propped up in the right combination to keep the bubs in place. However the main challenges in breast feeding were due to them being early.

After day three they didn’t have anymore formula, as I was blessed with enough milk to feed the entire NICU three times over! We then either fed them with bottles, down the tube in their nose, or I would breastfeed. The bottles and breastfeeding were both classed as a ‘sucking feed’. They started on all tube feeds, then went to two tubes/one suck, then one suck/one tube etc as they got stronger.

Eventually they were on all sucking feeds, yay! I can’t stress enough how difficult breastfeeding was with premature twins! I take off my hat to someone who does it successfully long term!

*Spoiler Alert*

(Our bubs got ‘nipple confusion’ after about two months and would no longer latch to the breast, which was devastating! I tried EVERYTHING! Nipple shields, different bottles, different techniques, but nothing worked.

And thus began my journey of seemingly endless, round the clock expressing, feeding, washing, sterilizing. And repeat. For another post…)

Surprises, Sleepovers and Baby Visits

One day I had a call from my mum in Queensland, just checking in on the twins and I. Moments later she walked through the door and surprised me! And better yet, the hospital let her sleepover! She was so excited to see her little grand babies!

They also let Pete sleepover every night after Mum went home, which was amazing! Very quickly, he was showing the nurses how to do everything, the sterilising, the breast pump (it was a beast!) and where everything was! Pity help me when I have the next baby and Pete is at home with the twins!

Here was a really lovely day, when the babies were well enough to be put onto portable monitors, (the pink and blue boxes in the middle of the photo), and they came to visit me, as I still couldn’t walk yet.

Another day the nurses actually wheeled my whole hospital bed into the NICU, and let me stay in there for hours with my babies! I was amazed at how accomodating everyone was at the hospital!

My Discharge

The doctors sent me in for a cat-scan on my brain, ‘just to make sure’ that the spinal headaches weren’t actually due to cancer… I guess you can never be to careful. But again, way to freak a girl out!

Finally, after a week of dehydration, drugs, drips and diarrhoea due to laxatives (Man, giving birth is glamorous!), I was discharged, as my spinal headaches miraculously went away on their own!

Things that would qualify our babies to go home:

1. They had to be breathing on their own (Good oxygen saturation levels)
2. They had to be gaining weight
3. They had to be on all ‘sucking feeds’

It would take the bubs another two weeks to tick all of these boxes, so one week after giving birth to my babies, I left the hospital and went home, battered and bruised, hormonal, and quite heartbroken to leave my fresh little babies behind. It was a real rollercoaster ride, but one that has turned into my amazing life now. In hindsight, there is nothing I could have changed, that I would change.

However, next time, if I have a single baby, there is no way in hell anyone is putting a needle near my back!

Thanks for reading to the end of my essay! Let me know via the comments below or on socials, if you have had any experiences with the spinal headaches or the NICU!