Just a me post today to fill you in on all the details.
Arrived at the hospital at 8am on the 23rd of October as requested, only to be told that the doctor had forgotten that it was his morning off and that I would need to come back at 11. Not really what I wanted to hear as I had already been up since around 2 and unable to sleep as I was nervous about the induction.
So hubby and I went and got breakfast and did some window shopping. DH was nervous too and hit the accelerator instead of the brake at one stage and nearly went through an intersection!
Got back to the hospital at 11 and then had the epidural put in place and a test dose run through. I made them wait until the effects had worn off before I would let them break my waters and even though the doctor wanted to get started on the drip straight away I told him I wanted 2 hours to give the broken waters a chance to do something before anything else. The epidural took a while to wear off, so I guess it was around 2pm by the time my waters were broken. I did start contracting, but as they wanted me to deliver before the OBs went home and the contactions wern't very regular yet, they started me on the drip at 4pm and kept increasing the dose every 1/2 hour until running at full dosage.
The labour took forever to become established and although it was more intense and longer than either of my other labours, I managed to survive with no pain relief until about 9cm dilated, after that I started on the lowest dosage of gas and after around 12 hours of labour Amber Rose made her appearance at 1:29am (after the OB had to be called back in) weighing in at 5lb 14 and a 1/2 ounces or 2680 grams and 47 cms long.
I then spent the next hour or so trying to push the second twin out, however as it was in a posterior position (and I was exhausted from the long labour and birth of the first twin) it was hard going. Usually they will intervene half an hour after the birth of the first twin; however they were happy enough with the monitoring to let me keep going. After an hour or so the OB decided that he would need to deliver the second twin with forceps. The epidural was turned on and at 2:42pm Kaylee Mae made her entrance weighing in at 6lb 1 and a 1/2 ounces or 2768 grams and a length of 46 cms.
The forceps delivery was a little rough, so Kaylee was whisked off to the special care nursery after a quick cuddle, but was released the next morning at around 10am.
We transferred back to our local hospital on Saturday arvo, but both girls developed jaundice and had to spend a couple of days under lights. My BP went back up again and due to a significant loss of blood, my iron levels were very low, so I am on meds and supplements for the time being.
We were released from hospital yesterday arvo and spent our first night as a family of six under the one roof last night.
All in all, I am very pleased to have been able to birth both of my babies vaginally - it mustn't happen very often as I was treated like a celebrity, with even midwives and doctors saying it was their first vaginal twin delivery. The induction meant the labour was much more intense than either of my others and longer than the other two put together, but I'm sure everyone is different - it was like my body resented not being able to do its own thing and punished me for it.
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