Jenny McQueen

Let me start with the spoiler alert: no one told me twins could be born 8 hours apart. 8 hours and 22 minutes to be exact. If you didn’t know either, buckle in, because have I got a story for you.

I didn’t share details publicly of Lena & Jaxon’s birth for over a year; it just felt too raw to share in the middle of post-partum recovery.

I was lucky to have an extremely smooth pregnancy. Twin pregnancies can be complicated, and so they come with frequent visits to Maternal-fetal medicine, also known as MFM. Once I hit 33 weeks, on top of seeing my midwife weekly, I was scheduled for weekly ultrasounds & non-stress tests with MFM. Every single visit was PERFECT. I really didn’t mind the frequent trips to the doctors; it was wonderful to “see” the twins so often.

I was due the second week of January, but I was SO sure these were going to be December babies. Everyone convinced me that twins come early! But Christmas day rolled around, and there I was on my couch, eating take out with my husband and binging RV lifestyle videos on youtube. I was also becoming very frustrated that there was not a single sign of labor. No early contractions.. I couldn’t even be sure if I was experiencing braxton-hicks.

Time literally was crawling by. Most Doctors don’t want twins to go past 38 weeks, (37 is considered full term), but my midwife/OB practice specialized in multiples, and were comfortable waiting for labor to start on its own, as long as everything looked healthy. At my 38-week OB check up, my only sign of progress was that I was about 1 cm dilated. Ugh!! It was hard to be patient when everything hurt and sleep was non -existent. I was doing alllll the things….eating dates, drinking raspberry leaf tea, having sex, but my body just wasn’t ready. We even did a membrane sweep..iykyk.

I went in for my 38 week MFM appointment on a Tuesday after lunch. My ultrasound tech was basically my BFF at this point, and a few minutes in to the scan, she went to grab the Doctor to take a closer look at something. Turns out Twin A’s fluid was low; practically non-existent. The specialist said he wanted me admitted immediately for induction, and since they are located in the same hospital as my practice, they called a nurse and wheeled me down to labor & delivery to wait for the midwife.

I found myself hanging out in a hospital bed, waiting on Rome to finish car seat installations, and trying to wrap my mind around this. The nurse on call had me completely convinced I was being induced, so I started texting family that it was go time.

When Stephenia (my midwife) arrived, she did a cervical check, and nothing had changed since the day before. The OB decided he wasn’t comfortable inducing since my body really didn’t seem ready, so we had to make a decision. They gave me the choice to go home and hydrate and then recheck fluid levels the next day, or to schedule a c section for the morning. I am typically a very decisive person but it felt AWFUL to pick between these options. I was nauseous considering the consequences. I really didn’t want to risk anything, but I also knew the doctors wouldn’t let me wait if it was truly dangerous, and I was determined to avoid a c-section if I could. Recovering from a c-section and not being able to lift one, let alone two babies, terrified me.

After talking with Rome, who encouraged me to go with my gut, I decided to ask for an IV and go home. At this point he was just leaving the fire station from getting car seats checked, so I met him at the house and had a small (okay probably big) break down over the weight of the choice.

I chugged water all night, got a little sleep and then my midwife texted me to come in at noon. I was encouraged we were making the right choice when I woke up from my nap to find I had lost part of my mucus plug. A first sign of actual progress!

When I came in for the ultrasound, twin A’s fluid was up a little, but not much. At this point, my best options were immediate induction or c-section. I *really* wanted to give my body a chance, so I choose induction, and begged to go home to get my stuff. I knew from our little test run that it would be way faster than waiting for Rome 😉 She said she would only let me leave if I promised to be back in one hour.

With the clock ticking, I went home to pick up Rome, grabbed my bags and my favorite pillow. It felt so surreal…I never pictured that I would be the one driving us to the hospital. Also I was starving, so we drove through Arby’s for a quick last meal. I definitely didn’t tell my midwife that I was in the drive-thru line when she texted asking for my ETA.

We checked in at 3pm, took an hour to settle in and then Stephenia broke twin A’s water at 4. There was hardly any fluid, but I was dilated to a 3. They also attached an internal monitor to twin A’s head.. This did restrict my movement somewhat, but I was still able to walk around.

At 5pm, my nurses started the pitocin.  It was clear my body was ready, because contractions kicked right in. It did make me anxious every time they upped the dose, about every 30 minutes. I wanted to be say “wait….isn’t that too fast? I think we should wait a few hours and see what happens.”

As the contractions picked up intensity, laying down felt awful, so Stephenia had me do some standing contractions. I made it through about 20 minutes of those, but ultimately I wanted the yoga ball so I could relax the rest of my body when they hit. Rome took a short nap (I suggested it, I knew it was going to be a long night), and I put on headphones and blasted a worship playlist I had made just for this. This was easily my favorite part of labor; I was able to really zone out for an hour, rock back and forth on the yoga ball and just get lost in the music.

By 11 pm, the contractions were too strong to focus on the music. Also I had to use the bathroom, and my midwife wanted me to try at least one contraction on the toilet. Yeah, that was a big hell no from me; that shit HURT! She had me try a couple more standing with one foot on a step. The weight of twins made my legs really cramp after just a couple, so then she had me lay with a giant peanut shaped ball in between my legs. That also hurt, but it helped things progress .

Around 1 am, the pain was so intense I couldn’t focus on breathing. I felt like my mind was spiraling and when they tried to talk me through a contraction, I could hardly hear what they were saying. It felt like a panic attack. I asked for another cervical check and I was only dilated 4 cms. I knew if I was going to be mentally present for the birth, I needed an epidural.

Rome was so supportive; he reminded me that when we hit this point, I had asked him to push me a little farther. That really made me pause. Yes, this was what I wanted. It took about 45 minutes to take in the the extra fluids and bring the anesthesiologist in. I was so happy to see that man! Once the drugs started to take the edge off, I was able to take a short nap, which was amazing. My body really kicked it into gear. when I woke up about 90 minutes later I was at 8 cm.

When I saw them wheel the birthing warmers for the babies into the room, I knew from the births I have photographed that meant it was almost time to start pushing. I couldn’t believe it was time already. Like wait, we are really about to have babies? Two of them?!? Between the carts, the nurses, the midwife, and the OB checking in occasionally, that room was crowded.

I started pushing at 5 am, and holy cow, even with meds that HURT!!  After describing this to a couple other people, I’m not totally sure my epidural was working right, because it felt like actual fire pushing her out.

The actual pushing & delivery was nothing like I hd visualized. I expected to be looking deep into my husband’s eyes for support, but the reality was that I had to mentally turn inside myself for all the strength I could muster. He held my right leg the ENTIRE time, so he was putting in work of his own, but I was so focused that I wasn’t communicating much. The midwives used a few different pushing techniques, like the tug of war method, but mostly I was in a typical birthing position because it felt the most comfortable.

Lena was born at 6:58 am, weighing in at 6 pounds 12 ounces. I know I should talk about how magical it was, but after a few sweet moments with her in my arms, all I could think about was how exhausted I was. I started immediately panicking thinking about having to do it again, and asked them if I could have more/stronger medication. They called the anesthesiologist back in and by this time it was a different one. He gave me some fentanyl and I dozed in and out for about 45 minutes while Rome did skin to skin with Lena. I felt guilty, but I was literally too tired to hold her safely. Every time I opened my eyes, I could see the two of them cuddling, and that was a beautiful vision I’ll never forget.

I also was incredibly thirsty at this point and when the cafeteria refused to send up soda because it was on my banned list, (why???) I begged the midwives to find me a coke. When I say begged, I am pretty sure I said “I can’t push another child out of my body until I have an ice cold coke”, and God bless them, they made it happen. I have never tasted anything so amazing in my life.

After my little nap. they needed to try flipping Jaxon from breech. Y’all, this took 2 midwives, an OB and 2 nurses. They brought in an ultrasound machine, broke his water and then did it almost entirely by external manipulation. I couldn’t see much, but Rome said watching the process was wild and looked like something from E.T. It took them about ten minutes, but they did it, and then put a binder on my stomach to make it harder for him to flip back up.

At this point my contractions had basically stopped, and my dilation had gone back to an 8. No one ever warned me that this was a possibility! The team said they thought my uterus was exhausted, which I’m sure it was-she was working hard! They paused the pitocin to see if a break would help restart labor. Thirty minutes later they started dialing it back up, but the contractions never got closer than 4-5 minutes apart again.

Jaxon’s heart rate was starting to dip during contractions, and I could see the medical staff exchanging glances, so I kept asking if we needed to be doing this in the OR, but they seemed confident it was safe to keep going. At 11:40 am they decided I needed to just start pushing, because he needed to be born whether or not my contractions were close. This meant I had to work really hard on each one. The pain was significantly different with Jaxon. It hurt but not as much like fire as Lena. I also had the urge to push, which felt new.

The whole time, (we are talking hours at this point) Rome was holding one of my legs up and helping hold my head. The midwife who delivered Lena left around noon because she had been awake for 3 days, and the new midwife, Meghann, was the one who had brought me to the practice in the first place. She and I had never been able to make an appointment work, so I literally met her in the delivery room. She had a very no nonsense approach…if I didn’t make progress on a push she told me, which wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but if you know me, that helped get the job done.

As I said, I started pushing at 1140 and I heard Meghannn say to a nurse that her record for time between twins was 8 hours, but no way we would hit that today. 🤣 The nurse who was holding my left leg was standing between me and the clock, so I couldn’t see what was happening time wise, but I could feel Rome’s smart watch buzzing constantly with messages coming in. Our family was starting to get worried that there was no news yet. Rome was so tuned in to me though, he never left my side, or put down my leg once I started pushing again.

The OB (who would be the one performing an emergency c-section if it went to that) kept coming in to monitor things. It took so long to make progress, up to 6 minutes between some contractions. I actually started to think he was never coming out. When we finally were close, I have never worked so hard in my life. I tried to get 5 pushes on each contraction. They asked if I wanted to reach down and feel his head, but I just wanted to be DONE. To be honest, I hardly remember anything of his actual birth, except the relief of him coming out. It turned out the cord was once around his neck, which explained the heart rate dips.  It took a few seconds for him to cry, but man those few seconds felt like an eternity. Jaxon was born at 3:20 pm, weighing 7 pounds 14 ounces.

I let a breath out then that I think I had been holding since I found out I was pregnant with twins: they were both here, and they were both safe. It felt like a miracle.

Rome cut the cord for both babies, (we did delayed cord cutting) and that felt so special to me, because I’d envisioned it before we knew we would have biological kids.

This is not the end of the birth story however. I still had to deliver the placentas. Every one assured me that was a breeze after delivering two babies, but my body did not want to let them go. Eventually they had to call the OB back and she had to manually separate them from my uterus. OWWW! I was definitely cursing and asking for more drugs. It took about 20 minutes to get them removed, and when they did, they were fused together and quite big. I made them take a photo of it on my phone, which died just as she started to snap, so poor Rome has a bunch of placenta photos on this phone.

Then the bleeding wasn’t stopping..they never called it hemorrhaging, but they said it was more than they liked, so the OB had to come back a third time and pull some clots and a couple more pieces of the placenta out. I was so DONE having all the hands and sensations in my body at this point.  When they finally started cleaning me up I didn’t want to be touched at all.

Before you can leave L&D, they make you get up to pee, and when I did, I almost passed out. For the first time in all of my pregnancy and labor, my blood pressure dropped really fast. They ended up giving me a catheter and then shipped us up to the recovery floor. Someone must have been looking out for us, because they gave us the only recovery room with two beds!

 I was so exhausted I decided to send the babies to the nursery so I could sleep. This was advice other parents had given me, and I’m so glad I listened! However I had no clue they would be waking me up every couple of hours to nurse; I really wish I’d been given some time to actually recover, because y’all, there has basically been no sleeping ever since.

It’s been a year and a half now since their birth. People warned me I would forget the intensity of it, but the details haven’t faded . It was a wild, painful ride that brought me two beautiful humans. I wouldn’t change a thing!