How we got here

OK, this is going to be an extremely long post.  It basically explains how we got to having two baby girls in the NICU.  Feel free to skip through it.

After about 3 years of infertility struggles (still not sure why the old fashioned way didn't work), we made an appointment with the friendly people at San Diego Fertility Center.  We did IVF and found out that Andrea was pregnant with twins (If you would like to know more about IVF and fertility stuff in general, I'm sure Andrea would be happy to talk to you about that when she starts to feel better.  I suppose you could ask me too, but she talks more than I do).

Andrea's official due date was April 22, 2013.  Those 6 months of pregnancy were the most enjoyable, rewarding, and peaceful times of her life.  It was absolute bliss, and everything she had ever hoped pregnancy would be (sarcasm).  She had a kidney stone (thought she was miscarrying), puked up blood, puked up Olive Garden, puked up cereal, puked up waffles, puked up pulled pork, puked up....you get the picture.

She started having some weird tightness in her abdomen in early December.  If I remember correctly (probably don't), she was told by her doctor's office to go into Labor and Delivery to be monitored.  They saw that she was having some contractions, so she was put on bed rest.  While on bed rest, the tightness/contractions continued, and she was on an oral medication called nifedipine, which helps to reduce contractions.  That medication seemed to work for the first few weeks, but it made her pretty nauseous.  She  started having more contractions at some point in December, and was again directed to go in to Labor and Delivery to be monitored.  She was kept overnight, and her doctor decided to send her home with an increase in her nifedipine. On December 27, she had a routine prenatal checkup with her doctor, and we found out that her cervix had shortened from approximately 3 cm (little over an inch) to about 1.9 cm (about 3/4 of an inch) over a time period of about 1 week.  Her doctor didn't like that, so Andrea was admitted to the hospital, diagnosed with preterm labor.

At that point, she was 23 weeks and 3 days along in her pregnancy (we knew this because we had done IVF and knew the exact day, hour, and minute of conception).  Read here for more information about survival and outcomes of preterm babies.  OK, if you glanced through that website I linked to in the last sentence, you'll see that survival rates for babies born then is somewhere in the 15 - 40% range (In other words, 60-85% of them die). About 10% of them come out of it without any type of moderate to severe life-long disability or health condition.  The one's that do make it go through A LOT of suffering.  Andrea was at the point where she could have gone into labor at any time, and the medical team needed to know if they were expected to try to do everything possible to resuscitate the babies, or to provide comfort care as we held them during their short few moments of life.  Hard decisions to make.....

Andrea was started on an IV medication called magnesium (nifedipine obviously wasn't working).  I think magnesium is latin for "drug that makes you feel absolutely terrible emotionally, physically, mentally; and it blurs your vision so you can't see."  She was on magnesium for 28 days (right up until c-section).  It did its job and kept the babies in her for 4 extra weeks.  Statistically, 4 weeks means our girls' chances for survival have increased from the 15-40% range to the 75-85% range.  4 weeks means our girls' chances of not having a lifelong disability or chronic health problem have increased from 10% to about 50%.  That was a long 4 weeks for us.

On January 24, 2013, the last morning Andrea was pregnant, her doctor noticed that Baby B (Paige) had a little too much amniotic fluid around her.  She decided to come back while I was with Andrea and have a second look with the ultrasound.  After examining Paige, she looked at Baby A (Aubrey), but couldn't see her head because Aubrey had gotten so low.  The doctor felt around and determined that Andrea was dilated to about 8 or 9 cm, which is way past the point of no return.  Less than an hour later, Andrea and I were the proud but scared parents of two baby girls.  Aubrey, our heavyweight, was born at 5:46 PM, weighing in at 2 pounts 1.5 ounces.  Paige, our petite girl, was born at 5:48 PM, weighing in at 1 pound 13.5 ounces.