twentythree

Checking off one of many milestones...we have safely made it to 23w2 days.

This was the point in my twin pg that I was admitted to the hospital. An hour long and bumpy horizontal ride with the ambulance driver weaving in and out of traffic, I vomited when I got to the hospital. It was probably lunchtime but I hadn't had any, so the spewage was minimal.

The tubes that the EMT used on my IV were bigger than the ones used at the hospital, so the whole thing had to come out and be replaced by a new rig. Little did I know that this IV changing thing would happen every four days after that, and that I'd be branded with adhesive up to two weeks after I was discharged, on both my arms and on my girly bits.

I did not freak out. Not when my doc checked me and gave me the news, not when she put me in the ambulance with the clothes on my back (and flip flops, as it was a warm November), not when I arrived at the hospital and was put on antibiotics as a precaution (I was told later that I didn't have an infection), and not when the neonatologist came in to recite the interior and exterior physical description of 23-weekers and the hospital's policy of not resuscitating. Everyone but the two of us was expecting me to deliver that night. It went in one ear and out the other. (La-la-la I can't hear you! I won't hear you!)

Everything in my pg was going fine up until this point, I had no reason to believe it would go haywire in 10 days, which is when they were born, add three to that for the girls to develop severe bleeding in their brains, add three to that for the baptism and prayers to be said, tears to be shed as we held our girls for almost 5 hours for the first and last time, people to arrive from all over, add a week for the funeral.

Looking back, it was naivety, or shock. I play it over and over again and wonder if it was one or the other. One or the other, I keep asking myself, wondering which one is better, but the end result is the same and it doesn't much matter.

And 16 months later, we are all safe. Baby is safe and kicking. Cervix is shut and calm. Wannabe dad is at work instead of running crazy through the house gathering our things for an indefinite hospital stay.

There is peace in this house as we wait for 10 long days to the next milestone. After that? I've never been pg past 24w5d, so I'll keep doing what I've been doing for the last 2 months and keep everything status quo until it's time, and I mean, full-term time.

If something should go haywire with this baby, I will most definitely freak out. There would be no way not to, knowing what I know and knowing how badly things can go. I should probably pack a bag just in case.