Pregnant with Twins – Month 10 (Weeks 36-40)

At your weekly visit to the obstetrician, your blood pressure is a little high again.

It takes three attempts to get you on to the examination table because of your enormous belly and severe swelling in your legs, feet and ankles.

The swelling has reduced you to wearing the only pair of shoes that fit – a pair of fluffy slippers. You take a look at how far you’ve sunk.

Only 10 months ago you were a lithe professional wearing business suits and high heels. Here you are now…frightfully enormous, no make-up, hair a mess, with a belly that would qualify you as the Myer Santa.

You only just stop yourself from begging the doctor to end your misery.

The swelling now has you lying in bed with your legs propped up on a breakfast tray table.

If your legs are level with your body or lower, they swell to the size of melons and you’re effectively crippled until you lift them up for a few hours to drain away some of the fluid.

You spend most days staring at the ceiling.

It’s DH’s 30th birthday. It takes all your strength to struggle downstairs and bake him a chocolate cake.

This is perhaps the most activity you’ve managed in weeks. You collapse afterwards and pray for a masseuse to magically appear and mend your broken back.

The next morning DH heads for the gym early. You decide it’s time to finish packing your hospital bag and fetch a piece of toast. In DH’s absence you tackle the stairs.

You’re halfway through the process when he returns and orders you upstairs. You protest, silently blessing his sweet little heart.

As you roll into bed, you grab one thigh and swing the leg onto the breakfast tray table (now a permanent fixture in the marital bed).

You grab the second thigh and attempt the swing when you suddenly feel a warm gush between your legs.

You can hear DH on the stairs and trying not to sound panicked, call out, “Ah, honey, either my waters just broke or I’ve peed myself.”

The gushing follows you to the bathroom where DH brings you the cordless phone and the number for the labour ward. Yes, he found it on the fridge.

“How far apart are the contractions they ask?”. “Far apart?”, you say. “I don’t know. I’ve felt like I’ve had them almost constantly for weeks.”

They advise a shower and wait and see. By the time you shower and reduce the gush to a trickle the contractions are a few minutes apart. You ring the hospital and they give you the wave to “Come on down”.

You’re actually calmer than you thought. Passing orders to DH and cursing the fact you only have four pairs of maternity underwear – one is soaked and the others are all in the drier.

Much to his consternation you end up in a pair of DH’s Calvin Kleins.

It’s only a few kms to the hospital, but half way there the contractions seem to have become almost permanent. Where one ends, the other starts.

DH drives into the emergency bay and orders a wheelchair. You are so engrossed in the pain you don’t even mind being in a public place wearing a pair of very wet trousers.

Settled into a birthing suite you are introduced to gas.

Sucking furiously on the gas through each contraction you get more pleasure from having something to grip than from the gas itself. It makes you slightly heady, but is otherwise pretty useless.

The doctor appears an hour later and after a painful internal examination he says the magic word, “Epidural”. While not the most comfortable experience in the world, the epidural brings sweet relief.

Even despite the fact it has to be adjusted several times and the dosage increased, it is still manna from heaven.

After your pregnancy experience, labour with an epidural is more like a picnic in the park. Ten hours later the doctor returns to check on you and decides you are ready to deliver…just as the epidural wears off for the sixth time.

Oops the anaesthetist has gone home. It’s okay you can have gas. Oops the equipment has already been removed to another suite. Okay, cold turkey it is then.

You wonder what your chances are of getting out of this without an episiotomy. You don’t fancy a recovery with stitches in your nether-regions. The doctor gives you little room for hope with the answer, “Nil”.

Some very hefty pushing later and Twin 1 arrives. He is whisked to the side for checking and eight minutes later his brother arrives in the same fashion. Time to push out the placenta. More pushing and it’s over. Nearly.

It’s time for some stitches as you glance briefly at the two pink rabbits being wheeled to the Special Care Unit. You watch DH follow them, only to discover some days later he has taken two of the most precious photos you’ll ever own.

Photos of Twins 1 and 2 staring with a look of vague confusion at their new world from their humidicribs.

You enquire about the size of your episiotomy and are met with the dry response, “Big enough to drive a bus through”. So glad you chose a doctor with a sense of humour.

Pregnant with Twins – Month 10 (Weeks 36-40)

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