It all started with those simple words from Jaime on Tuesday night (10/20/09). Well I guess they really weren't that simple. I was walking into a church meeting just before 7:00 PM central time when Jaime called me to tell me that she had been having contractions for a few hours and that she had just got off the phone with her doctor. She was on her way home and would meet me there. Yes that's right, my wife who was carrying twins and dealing with gestational diabetes had suffered through a few hours of contractions at the office, and then decided to drive home while talking to her doctor. Crazy, I know. We let her rest at home while timing her contractions for about 30 minutes, and due to the spacing and intensity of the contractions I called her doctor and we were told to get to the hospital ASAP.
Jaime was brought into the childbirth unit at Memorial Hospital in South Bend and immediately they evaluated her situation and began attempting to stop the pre-term labor Jaime was in. Jaime was also given a steroid injection to help the babies' lungs develop in the event that the doctors were unable to stop the contractions. After many hours and some drug induced side effects that were very difficult for Jaime it appeared that the contractions had been stopped.
Tuesday evening Jaime was moved from the childbirth triage unit to the Obstetrics Special Care Unit where she would be monitored constantly. On Wednesday morning it appeared that labor had been averted. We all felt that Jaime would be released soon with a prescription for oral medication in the next day or so, and that she would be confined to bed rest at home. It was already difficult given that our first child Drew was unable to visit the hospital to see his mom due to the visitation rules implemented by Memorial Hospital because of the H1N1 flu issues.
Jaime tried to lobby the nurses and her OB doctor on Friday morning to allow her to leave the hospital and rest at home. Unfortunately (not really) Jaime's doctor unequivocally denied her request and told her that she was not getting out of the hospital until the babies were born. At this point Jaime started creating a list of all the items she would need for her (perceived) long stay in the hospital. I was then given this list and told to deliver her needs and hunker down for a long journey of caring for our son by myself (with help from her parents of course).
I was able to get some good friends of ours to watch Drew on Friday night, and I dropped him off at around 6:15 PM Central. I told our friends that I would be back by around 9:00 to pick up Drew and take him home.
I arrived at the hospital and brought in numerous items for Jaime so she could work and be more comfortable in the hospital for what we thought would be at least 10-14 days. About an hour after I arrived the nurse came and told Jaime that she would have to have her monitors hooked up for about 20 minutes before she went to bed for the night. I figured it was time to start wrapping up and get ready to take off, but Jaime's body had a different idea. She started to have contractions high in her uterus. They weren't particularly painful to Jaime at first they were just taking her breath away. The doctor decided to administer her medication in a double dose about an hour early to try to quell the contractions. After about 20 additional minutes of monitoring the contractions were not slowing down, and the doctors decided to try to give Jaime morphine to calm her and her uterus down. About 10 minutes after they administered the morphine the contractions had not stopped and the doctors decided it was time to take the babies. Just before 11:30 Eastern time we welcomed the boys to the world...
