forgive me in advance, as this is where things are a bit hazy. so, i'll do my best to remember the bits and pieces.
so we hop into the car and are on our way to the hospital, when it hits me that i'm supposed to have called the doctor to let her know what was going on. another DUH moment! so i get on the phone as mark just gets on the highway towards the hospital. i leave a message with the on-call service and wait till the doctor calls back. about 5 or 10 minutes or so along the highway, the doctor calls back and i explain what's going on. she tells me to go to the nearest hospital as she doesn't think i'll make it in time to get to our hospital (45 min away). i tell mark, and he's not having it. he's determined to get me to our hospital and to our doctor, no ifs ands or buts.
his explanation was that we had gone through so much already to get to this point that he wasn't letting some doctor delivery our twins that we'd never met and that didn't know my medical history or our pregnancy history. he had a valid point... to me at least. but when i told my doctor this, she wasn't too pleased and was urging me to turn around and go to the nearest hospital. by this time, i hadn't noticed it, but mark was flying on the highway at almost 90 mph!!! which meant that from where we had started to where we were now, the trip would usually have taken at least 20 minutes and we had just done it in 5 minutes! so mark told me to tell the doctor that we'll be there sooner than she thinks and there's no turning back now. she was not pleased at all.
this is the part that gets hazy...
in a record time of 20-25 minutes or so, we got from baltimore back to rockville. we pull up to the ER at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital and head in. we go straight up to the 3rd floor where labor and delivery are and sign in. i guess my doctor told the front desk to possibly expect me and how crazy we were for making the trip 'cause the front desk girl was like "wow, i can't believe you made it. you're crazy!" or something like that... hard to remember!
so around 6 am, they finally take me back into a triage room to get me on monitors to see how things were going. because i was only 33 weeks 1 day, they wanted to slow down and/or stop my contractions and prevent preterm labor. as i'm lying in the bed writhing in pain from the contractions, i feel them prick me, take blood, give me an IV and all sorts of other things going on that i really cannot recollect right now. according to mark though, i was given several rounds of some drug that was supposed to slow down or stop the contractions. they did this 3 times. all 3 times failed to do their job. so, this was it. the babies were coming and there was nothing we could do to stop it anymore.
after however many hours of prepping and paper signing, i was whisked off to an operating room to get prepped and ready for a cesarean delivery. the decision had been made just the week before to have them via C-section because reagan hadn't turned and it didn't look like she was going to by the time i was supposed to deliver. so after mark came in to join me, it was go time.
so, at 11:15 am, our first twin was born... Lincoln Jude Yuen; 3 pounds, 15 ounces, 16.75 inches.
and then 3 minutes later, at 11:18 am, our second twin was born... Reagan Elizabeth Yuen; 3 pounds, 12 ounces, 16.75 inches.
and our lives changed forever... yuen, party of 4.
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