The best words I can come up with to describe the last day and a half is, wow.  Ironically, that is the one response that probably perturbed me the most when people find out how many kids we have together.  I guess in this day and age it is quite an appropriate response.  This has truly been a whirlwind of emotions, from anxiety, to excitement, to fear, to nervous, to pure joy, to amazing content with what our life now looks like.  Where to possibly begin, well how about the beginning…….

Wednesday 10 am

Super mom heads to the doctor to see what is happening with this dilation thing.  Of course she is dilated to 6cm and he decides today is the day!  Well, the appointment was supposed to be at 1pm and is moved to 10am, and I have patients scheduled all morning, not ideal.  The morning is, well to preface it is a full moon and those are……um…..crazy days.  The prediction is something called a “blood” moon, which is a lunar eclipse, I think.  We mark these days on the calendar at the office, for obvious reasons, the kids are normally a little whacky on those days.  Sure enough, it was one of those nutty mornings and we fell a little behind.  Her doctor was heading into a cesarean and he wanted to break her water at noon.  Luckily we are attached to the hospital and there is a breezeway between the buildings that drops me off at Labor and Delivery.  So I got my best Carl Lewis or Usain Bolt impersonation going, age adjusted, and sprinted to L & D just in time.  It was slow going from there, with little contractions happening, even after water breakage.  So when you have twins they are born in an OR type setting, NICU attends, and lots of helpers.  Amazingly baby B flipped and moved head down as well, so both were in a great position for a regular vaginal delivery.  Now dilated to 9cm and the excitement began, we headed down the hall.

Wednesday 1 pm

 Now in the OR, the staff was getting all set up, the doc comes in and, a process that I have been through a few times before, begins!  This was already a weird day…..working all morning, running over the breezeway, OR delivery, twins, the list goes on and on.  It was about to get a little more interesting.  Lots of pushing, more then the last few kids, which again was a little strange for us.  My super woman is an amazing laborer and usually this goes really fast and easy.  I promptly received a proper education from our phenomenal OB, also a close friend, that because the uterus is wrapped around both babies, the contraction has limited force and is not as focused as with just a singlet.  This makes the “push” less effective and it requires a lot more effort, even though these babies were much smaller then our last couple.  Nonetheless, at 16:19 we had baby A delivered and walling away!  Now the tricky part, grab baby B and get him out as well.  This became quite the challenge because as his world became less crowded, he decided to go transverse.  This complicated the efforts to grab an appendage and bring down the birth canal.  Then he started to labor and his heart rate plummeted from the 150s to the 70s.  After, what seemed like 20 min of trying to grab him, a lot of phone calls were quickly made and all those staff that were just “in the room” went into action.  My friend had to do what he did not want to do, perform an emergent cesarean delivery.  Controlled chaos in sued, the room was a buzz, and for the first time, that I can remember, I saw a touch of panic and uncertainty in this woman that is always in control.  As expected, baby B was born without complication at 16:32, only 13 minutes after his brother.  I would have sworn there was 45 minutes in-between those two entering the world.  This was all very disconcerting and after making sure both the boys were doing well, I rushed back in to check on my amazing wife, she was not doing great.  Surgically, no problems, but mentally it appeared to be very difficult, and she was not sure what was going on during this change in plans.  After Oakes’ ordeal, we are all a little more aware of birth defects and complications, how can your thoughts not go there with what just happened?  But by the sweet grace of God, along with amazing doctors, nurses and auxiliary staff, the boys, mom, and everything turned out amazing!

Now here we are the night before discharge and we are elated.  Not only is everyone doing fantastic, but these two boys are pure nirvana.  There is nothing like watching your new born sons sleep while you are holding them.  Their little eyes flutter with dreams and the rhythmic movement of their mouths as they sleep.  Perfect little faces with unclouded innocence that only an infant can possess.  I am a proud father and even having done this 7 times,  I still has the same feeling of euphoria when I look upon these boys.  Your own flesh in blood that you created, does it really get more heavenly then this?  It feels like all the stresses leading up to this day have washed back out to sea, and the future is once again an amazing ray of light.  This is the final time I will have this feeling, the final chapters in this family.   We have now completed the seating for our Table for 9.

Now the fun of fatherhood really begins…….but I will stay in paradise for one more night!  Bonne nuit….carpe diem