"An UN-Wanted Birthday" (12/12/13)

Thursday December 12, 2013 had arrived.  I woke up with a smile on my face after sleeping so well and ready to take on another day of great heart monitoring for my boys.  My nurse that day was Katie.  She was a real sweetheart.  She had taken care of me one night before so I had met her and she did a really good job so I was happy to have her back as my nurse that day.  She came in and slipped the heart rate monitors back on my belly to begin our first one hour session for the day.  It, as always, took a little bit of time to get the boys on the monitor and have them stay on the monitor.  Once she found Colin and Nathan, she left and I was confident we were going to pass this one just like we had passed the ones the day before. 

           

As the clock ticked away, Kevin and I would glance over at the monitors every now and then to see how they were doing.  We both noticed that Nathan’s heart was not as steady as it should be.  I tried not to get nervous because even though something could look bad in my eyes, the Doctors are the ones that really know what they are looking for.  The hour was just about done and Dr. DeFranco came in and told us her findings from the monitoring.  Dr. DeFranco was a MFM doctor and would be the head doctor when Dr. Jaekle wasn’t there.  She said that Nathan’s heart was decelerating a bit more than they would like so they wanted me to go get another ultra sound.  We took the monitors off and in a matter of a few minutes, the ultra sound tech was in my room with a wheelchair ready to take me down to the US room.  She wheels me in and I crawl up on the chair and she begins to squirt my belly with the US jelly for the millionth time. 

           

I didn’t want to look.  I didn’t want to get myself worked up over something that I thought looked bad when it really might not be anything.  I tried not to look but I had to.  I could tell something was wrong.  Dr. DeFranco was in one of my ultra sounds a few days prior and explained to us what she looks for on the Doppler’s in regards to blood flow so I sort of had an idea of what I was looking for.  When we got to Nathan’s heartbeat and pulled up the Doppler wave, I automatically saw that there was absent blood flow in a portion of the wave.  That scared me.  The Tech sat there and watched Nathan to see if he was ‘Practicing’ breathing.  At this gestational age, they are practicing to breathe inside the womb and you can see their ribs expand and contract.  They are just starting to PRACTICE for the real world.  They are not ‘ready’ for the real world. 

           

As Kevin and I were in the US room, my mom got to the hospital and brought Kevin some coffee.  He was sipping on that as we watched our babies on the screen for what was going to be our last time seeing them on an Ultra sound.  The tech wasn’t able to tell us anything that she was finding.  She had to talk to Dr. DeFranco first.  We were done.  They wheeled me back into my room and in walked Dr. DeFranco and Dr. Vasconti.  She said that Nathan’s heart was not getting the blood flow that he needed because of that absent blood flow that we saw in the Doppler.   Nathan didn’t want to be inside his mommy any more.  She said what we have been dreading to hear all week long; “We have to deliver your babies in the next 2-3 hours!”  If they didn’t take them now, they were going to die inside me.  I started crying hysterically.  I was only 24 weeks and 5 days.  My babies weren’t ready!  We are 15 weeks early!

           

Kevin hugged me and told me everything was going to be all right.  I was scared to death.  I didn’t know what the next few hours and few days were going to hold.  I prayed so hard for my babies to come out of this healthy but now, everything is in the hands of the Doctors and Nurses.

           

My nurse Katie got right to work.  They were going to put a Foley catheter in as well as pump me full of Magnesium.  Magnesium is supposed to help with Colin and Nathan’s neuro function since they were going to be born so prematurely.  Katie said that the Magnesium would make me feel very hot and very nauseous as if I had the flu.  Nothing could make me feel worse than I already did.  I was petrified about my babies being born this early. 

           

As she pumped me with the magnesium, I only got a little warm from the neck up.  No nausea or anything.  Kevin said I was super woman.  Everything the Doctors said would happen to me has not.  The amniotic fluid that leaked into my system after the ablation was supposed to make my shoulders hurt.  It did not.  The magnesium was supposed to make me feel like I had the flu.  It did not. 

           

It was time to go into the Operating room.  Kevin was going to meet me in there after I had my epidural.  I hugged him and started to cry.  I told them that this is a time when we should be taking pictures and be excited that our babies are being born today.  Instead we were crying tears of sadness and fear instead of happiness and joy.  This was not a happy moment.  This wasn’t the right time.   I should have 10-12 more weeks left with my babies in my belly.  I should have a much bigger belly then I did.  This was all happening far too soon.

           

They wheeled me down the hall and into the O.R.  I became quiet and still and I just went into a daze.  Once we were in the room, they asked me to sit up so they could give me the epidural.  I sat up and started to lean on Katie but her mask hit her eye and cut her contact so she handed me off to Bridget.  I buried my head in her shoulder as they stuck my spine with the needle.  I laid back down on the table, they hung a sheet up so I couldn’t see what was going on and then Kevin came in all garbed up in his scrubs.  He sat to the left of me as he held my hand.  I couldn’t believe this was happening. 

           

I felt some tugging on my abdomen and then before you know it, at 3:13 pm Colin Martin Kane was born: 1 lb 9.3 oz and 13 1/4 inches long.  Within seconds I saw a nurse with Colin in his arms and he showed him to me very quickly as he whisked Colin off to make sure he was breathing.  Seconds after that, Nathan Daniel Kane was born at 3:13 pm.  He was 1 lb 2.5 oz and 12.6 inches long.   They did the same thing and showed him to me very briefly.  I could not believe how small my babies were. 

           

Within a minute, my babies were born and I was left frightened and worried about their livelihood.  As the doctors were sewing me up, they told me that both Colin and Nathan were born in their Sacs.  There is a wives tale that states that babies that are born in their sacs are going to be geniuses.  Although a cool idea to think about, I just wanted my babies healthy and alive.  Geniuses or no geniuses, it didn’t matter to me. 

           

I remember lying there as they were closing me up and asking Kevin if they circumcise boys at this gestational age.  I have no idea why that was the only question that came to my mind but it did.  Minutes later, once they got my babies on oxygen, they brought them both in to see Kevin and I.  First came Colin.  They brought him really close to me but he had so much equipment on his face that it was hard to tell what he looked like.  Then came in Nathan.  They brought him so close to me that I got to kiss him!  I loved my babies so very much.  It was killing me that I couldn’t spend time with them like a mom should do after her babies are born.  Nothing about this entire experience is normal and not what a first time pregnancy, or any pregnancy for that matter, should be like.

           

I got wheeled into the recovery room and was greeted by my Mom and Dad.  We told them that the C-Section went well and that Colin and Nathan were now permanent residents of the NICU.  Kevin was in the NICU visiting his sons.  He came back with pictures of them.  I couldn’t believe how tiny they were but I was glad to know they were doing as good as they could have been.  Katie got me all settled in the room and said that I needed to start pumping right away.  So my parents stepped out and I pumped for the very first time.  I didn’t get anything but that is normal.  After a little bit, the feeling in my legs was coming back and I was able to move them. 

           

After an hour of recovery, the nurses asked me if I wanted to go see my babies.  The answer was obviously ‘YES!’  They wheeled my entire bed into the NICU.  Colin and Nathan were in different PODS so we went to see Colin first.  They were able to fit my bed on the side of his incubator and I could see him.  I was too far away since I was lying down to touch him but it was nice to see him.  Then they rolled me over to Nathan’s POD.  My bed wasn’t able to fit on either side of Nathan’s incubator so I was not able to see him.  Kevin took another picture and he showed it to me.  After my very short visit with my newborn babies, they moved me into the Antepartum unit where I would spend the duration of my time as an inpatient.

Nathan Just Born

Nathan

Colin Just Born

Colin

That evening, I spent my time in bed.  Nothing hooked up to me, no wires hanging out, no monitors to look at.  I was sad.  I would have been hooked up to monitors for 3 more months if I had too if that meant my babies were growing inside me.  The lactation consultants came in to give me some pointers on pumping.  A mothers’ breast milk is the best medicine for a preemie so I knew that this was something that I had to do.  I wouldn’t get much at first but even if I got a single drop, I was supposed to suck it up with a syringe and run it down to the NICU.  They could add it to the donor milk until I produced enough for them.  Every three hours I would pump.  I still didn’t get anything that night.

In the middle of the night, we were visited three times by NICU doctors.  One time, it was because Colin needed to be intubated and they needed our permission.  The second time, it was Nathan that needed to be intubated.  The third time was to tell us that while intubating Colin, they accidently cut his lip so they wanted to tell us so we wouldn’t be surprised in the morning.  They also told us at that point that Colin was up to 100% oxygen on the breathing machine.  We didn’t know what that meant so we just accepted it.

It had been such an emotional 24 hours.  We had no idea what the next few days would be like or even the next few weeks or months.  Cincinnati was now my permanent residence until the boys were ready to come home with us to Columbus.  I was not going anywhere. 

I don’t know if I am a bad mom for saying this but that day was a very UN-Happy Birthday.   Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to be able to touch my babies but none of us wanted them to join us in the real world this soon.  It’s definitely a moment that should be an amazing time in a family’s life and it would have been if it were 3 months later, but now was not the time.   It was a Birthday that came far too soon.

"The Wedding" (12/11/13)

Wednesday morning came and at 9 am, they took me off the monitors.  I had been lying down in a hospital bed for a week now.  Other than getting up for showers every other day and getting up to use the restroom, I have been in that bed on my back.  It doesn’t take long for your body to become deconditioned.  Kevin being a PT, knew this all too well that this could happen.  We thought it would be a good idea to get up and walk around the unit a bit.  I put on pajama pants and a shirt and walked as far as I was allowed to walk.  It didn’t take long for my legs to get tired so we went back to the room and I sat up in a chair.

Bob was my nurse again that day.  He asked us if we heard about the wedding and if we were going to it. A wedding?  We are in L+D.  What is this wedding you speak of?  Bob said that there was a girl that got admitted to antepartum that day and that her and her fiancé were going to get married in the solarium.  Apparently they were going to get married on December 21^st but now that their baby might come early, they were going to have their uncle come in and marry them bedside.  Her nurses heard of this and told her that they were going to throw her and her fiancé a wedding in the solarium.  They got flowers donated and a cake donated.  They had an employee come down to be the singer and the Chaplin was going to marry them.  The nurses were going to give them the best wedding that could be done in a hospital.  So Bob said that we could go if we wanted to.  It was going to be at 4:30.

           

Since they took me off the monitors at 9, they counted from 8 am – 9 am as my first hour.  The boys passed.  And then around 2pm, I did another hour and passed that one.  The boys were behaving great! So after that hour of monitoring, we hung out in our room until it was time to go down for the wedding.  I was wearing my hospital gown but then I thought, ‘what if the bride has her hospital gown on?  I can not be wearing the same outfit as the bride!”  So I put on a shirt and then my purple pajama pants.  I was really dressed up for this event.  At 4:30, Kevin, my mom and myself walked down to the solarium.

We were the first people there.  It was obvious that this wedding was not running on time.  I was standing for a while but I couldn’t stand long so I sat down and we waited.  A news station camera crew came to get this on film and it was going to be put on the 11 o’clock news that night.  I had purple pajama pants, a grey and red striped shirt and no makeup on.  I wasn’t camera ready but I really didn’t care.  After a while, the wedding started. 

The bride processed in with a tiara in her red hair, a black shirt, and jeans fully equipped with an insulin pump hanging out of her pocket.  As the vocalist sang her last note, the Chaplin began the ceremony.  They exchanged rings and kissed for the first time as husband and wife under a paper Mache wedding bell.  Then they headed over to the table to cut the cake.  We did not stick around for the ‘reception.’   

           

9pm was another monitoring of the boys heart rates.  We passed that one as well!  My babies were being so good and I was so proud of them.  If we had one more day of good monitoring then we could potentially go back to Columbus.  Before I went to bed that night, I showered and washed my hair and just made sure I felt good on the outside.  We were potentially going home in 2 days or so and my babies hearts were doing well so I was feeling decent on the inside and wanted to match that on the outside.  I was confident that things were looking up and my babies were going to stay in me for a lot longer than we expected.

That night I got to put my hospital bed all the way flat and lay on my side.  I was not hooked up to anything all night long.  I didn’t have to get the nurse every time I had to go to the restroom.  They only came in to take my vitals, which they had to every hour or 2 but other than that, I slept very well.

"The Labor and Delivery Unit" (12/4/13 - 12/10/13)

We arrived to my L+D room after a bumpy ride over in the ambulance.  The nurses that came with me in the ambulance told me that I need to use the restroom in a bed pan since standing wasn’t a good option at that point.  So once I got there, I got to experience the joys of peeing in a bed pan.  Unfortunately for me (and the nurses) I had to go almost every 20 min because I had had an IV for my surgery and I was ridding my body of all that fluid.  Some one told me that once you get pregnant, you get over being shy pretty quickly.  That is very true.  I had been in emotional ruins for the past week so it felt good to find humor in the fact that I was peeing in a bed pan in front of people I just met and they had the joy of taking it out from under me and wiping me.  I’m only 27 and I never thought those words would come out of my mouth. 

           

Kevin drove the car from Children’s to University Hospital so it took him a little bit longer to make his way up to my room.  Once he got there, he told me that he had talked to my mom and told her what transposed with the surgery and that she was on her way down. 

I had two nurses that afternoon.  Lisa and Alicia.  It looked like Lisa was training Alicia.  UC was a teaching hospital and I am all for certain things being “practiced” on me, but when it came to making sure my babies were taking care of, Mama Bear would come out to play if anything was going wrong.  They hooked me up to a plethora of equipment.  I had two heart monitors on my belly, one for Colin and one for Nathan, and then a contraction monitor for me.  Each monitor had 1 large, wide, itchy, strap to hold it down.  And because the monitors were so sensitive, if I moved even just a little bit, we would sometimes loose the baby’s heart beat and they would have to come in and try and find it again. So I was on my back sitting up and not moving.  I also had a pulse ox on my finger, an IV through my hand and a blood pressure cuff wrapped around my arm.  I tried to get some rest before my mom got there and everything was calm.  I did nod in and out but I couldn’t go long periods of sleeping because someone was in my room taking my temperature or giving me medicine every 2-3 hours.

Once, Alicia came in to fix a heart monitor and as she was leaving, she tripped over a chord, which tugged on the monitors.  This startled me because the monitor slid over the incision site where I just had surgery.  A couple hours later, Lisa came in and tripped over them as well.  Needless to say we were happy to have a shift change and we were more aware of where the nurses were standing from then on out.

That afternoon when my mom arrived, I cried when I saw her.  I now know how powerful a mothers love is for her child(ren) and I could tell that seeing me go through this was very hard on her.  Around 6 pm, the nurses suggested that I order dinner for myself because the cafeteria would close at 7.  My mom got on the phone but was on hold for 15 min.  Then she tried again at 6:25pm.  While on hold, a Fellow from the NICU stopped in named Kim.  She wanted to come in and talk with us to give insight on what to expect if our babies were born in the next day or so. My mom hung up so she could hear what Kim had to say.  What I was learning through the whole process was that there is not one single person who can predict what the outcome is going to be.  No one knew when my boys were to be born and if they were born soon, what would the future hold.  No one could answer that.  But Kim could at least give us a general idea of what to expect our babies would go through if born as 23 weekers.  She was wonderful and answered a bunch of questions.  Although what she had to say was hard to hear, all we could do was hope that we would not have these babies soon and we would go as long as we possibly could. 

Kim left and since my mom hung up the phone while trying to order me dinner, the cafeteria had closed and I was left dinnerless.  My nurse Lisa scrounged up some crackers and a luke warm cup of Chicken Noodle soup.  I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before at Brio so I was a bit hungry.  I took what I was given and was just happy I wasn’t going in to labor.  After a bit, my mom left to go stay in the hotel room that Kevin and I stayed in the past two nights.

A wrest-less night was upon me.  Kevin was asleep on the tiny pull out couch but I was in a lot of pain.  Being on my back for that long without being able to turn on my side really took a toll on my lumbar spine.  They gave me medicine to help the pain.  I can tell you right now that it was not back labor.  Not that I know what back labor feels like but I eventually was able to get up to go to the restroom and the pain subsided.

           

The next morning I started to have a lot of contractions.  None of my contractions were painful to me.  Sometimes I wouldn’t even realize I was having one.  Kevin would be watching the monitor and look at me and say “Kelly? Are you having a contraction?”  I would look at the monitor and say, “I guess I am.”  And other times I would think I was having a contraction but then look at the monitor and it wasn’t even spiking.  But that morning, I was having a lot in a row that I could feel.  I had been taking Procardia, which is a pill that helps lessen contractions, since the night before my ablation.  This worried Kevin and me, so the doctors gave me some morphine which would help contractions and make me sleepy.  I later found out that they mainly gave it to me to ease my worry more so than for my contractions.  After I received that I took a nice little nap.

           

My mom got to the hospital as I was sleeping.  My dad was also on his way down from New Wilmington, PA. While I was sleeping, apparently my mom asked Kevin how he was handling everything and he just started to cry and said, “I just don’t want Kelly to be disappointed.”  I am sure this was hard on him because he was worried about me as well as his boys whereas I was just mainly concerned about my boys.  I knew that deep down in my heart, no matter what was going to happen that we would be alright but I didn’t want things to be ‘just alright.’ I wanted them to end with Kevin, myself, Colin and Nathan all home in Columbus happy and healthy.

           

My dad finally arrived and we caught him up on the details.  Dr. Jaekle along with Dr. Vasconti came in that day to talk with us and see how we are all holding up.  Dr. Vasconti was very quiet when he came in with other Doctors.  He was mainly an observer but then when he came in to tell us information, he was still very quiet and hard to hear.  But he was nice, none the less.   It was really nice to have family with us so they could hear everything I heard and just be extra sets of ears for Kevin and I.  The boys’ heart rates were doing fine so I asked Dr. Jaekle what his thoughts were on me taking a shower.  He said that it would do me some good to get all freshened up but then get right back on the heart monitors.  I was relieved to hear that.  And I know what I am about to say might be a bit more information that you would like, but I also asked him about having a bowel movement.  To be quite honest, I was scared to bare down.  I didn’t want that to cause anything to happen that shouldn’t happen.  He also gave me the go ahead to do that as well.  Once again, I was relieved.

           

I had a wonderful nurse named Poni that day.  She was so sweet and she knew what she was doing.  But just because she knew what she was doing, I still kept track of what medicines I was taking and when I should take my next dose.  I was given 2 shots of a steroid to help the babies lungs function just incase they were born while I was there.  I got one the day of my surgery and one that next day. 

That night, my parents had left to go back to the hotel.  It was 7 pm when they do shift change and my new nurse for the night came in named Bridgett.  She was Jamaican and she came in and got right to work giving me my medicine and everything.  She wasn’t very personable and she was very hard to understand.  About 20 min later, she came in and told me that she was going to give me this other medicine and then stick a progesterone up me.  Both Kevin and I asked her 5 times, “Are you sure this is for me?”  She said, “Yes” because it was supposed to help with my contractions.  I was already taking Procardia, which was helping with my contractions, so why was I getting something else AND the Doctor never came in to tell me that they were ordering this medicine.  Since we asked her 5 times and she sounded very certain, I took the pill but we asked to see the Resident on duty that night, Dr. Penna, just to find out why they decided to give me this.  The Dr. never once came in that whole night to explain.  Bridgett came in 30 min later and said, “I am so sorry, that medicine was not meant for you.  But it is not going to hurt you.”  They are damn lucky that it wasn’t something that would have thrown me in to labor.  We would have had a HUGE issue if that were the case.  And then around 8 pm, Poni came in right before she was about to leave for the night and said, “I hear you are 4 cm dilated!”  Kevin and I looked at each other and said “NO!!! No one has checked my cervix at all.  You have the WRONG patient!!!”  So clearly, they were mixing me up with another patient down the hall.  We were glad the medicine I took wasn’t going to have a negative effect on my boys and me, but it still freaked us out at first.  The rest of the night was pretty calm.

           

The next morning was Friday the 6^th.  The Doctors came in and said that the heart monitoring was going very well and they wanted to move me to the Antepartum unit.  This was a unit that was farther away from the O.R. but because the monitoring was so good, they felt comfortable sending me down there.  They said that I could go on intermittent monitoring which would be 1 hour for 3 times a day.  But if one hour didn’t look good, I would go right back on continuous monitoring.  Although they gave me the option, I still insisted on continuous monitoring. 

In Antepartum

That afternoon they wheeled me down to Antepartum.  We had a quiet night that evening.  That next morning the 7^th, I was watching the boys heart monitor and I was noticing that Nathan’s heart started to decelerate more so than usual.  I got really scared and started to cry so my mom called the nurse in.  The nurse came in and said she would get the Doctor to come in and talk to me about it.  There were monitors all over the unit as well as the Labor and Delivery unit so someone was always watching them.  The Doctor came in and calmed me down.  She was also 24 weeks pregnant with a singleton baby.  She said that decels like that were normal for that gestational age.  She said her baby was doing it as well, they just didn’t know about it because they weren’t monitoring her baby.  She got me to stop crying, I calmed down and then she left.  5 minutes later, she came back in and explained that since she left, Nathan’s heart was decelerating way more than it should be so she called Dr. Jaekle and they decided to move me back over to Labor and Delivery to be as close to the O.R. as possible.  I was very scared and upset.  I seriously thought that my babies were going to be born that day.  They were 24 weeks on this particular day.  I did NOT want them to arrive yet.  I cried all the way to my new room in L+D. 

They put me in a different room than I was in to begin with.  This room was tiny to say the least.  Kevin would have to move furniture in order to get around my hospital bed.  The bathroom was a shared bathroom with another room and the sink was in our room instead of in the bathroom.  It was very cramped and I was very sad and scared.  And it didn’t help that in the room next to us was what sounded like 20 people just being completely loud and obnoxious.  Here I am scared that my babies were going to be born today and these people would just not be quiet.  I told my nurse Bob that I was scared and that these thin walls weren’t helping.  He listened and said that the noise wasn’t going to stop all night so he went out to see if there was another room available.

           

Bob came back in and told us we were moving rooms!  We went down the hall to a much larger and much quieter room.  We loved Bob.  He was our nurse once before we moved to Antepartum.  The babies loved Bob as well.  Every time they fell off the monitor, it would only take Bob 10 seconds to find them.  Sometimes nurses would have to bring in an ultra sound to find the babies heartbeat.  This could take up to an hour sometimes but it seemed so easy for Bob.  They rolled me in to my new room.  It was towards the end of the hallway and it was massive!  We were so grateful that it was a room that Kevin and our family could all fit in and best of all….it was quiet. 

That night our friend Tyler came by the hospital to visit.  It was good to see him.  His wife was pregnant and was due only a week later than we were so he could understand how scared we were about the possibility of our babies being born this prematurely. 

           

The next day, Sunday the 8^th, my friends Sarah and Brittany drove all the way from Columbus to come visit me.  They were so sweet. They brought me DVD’s to watch, magazines to read and they also brought me a little Christmas Tree to put in my hospital room.  They hung out for a few hours and we talked about everything that we had been through up until that point.  They left and then a few hours later, Kevin’s former boss Jonathan, that now lives 30 min away from our hospital, came to visit us as well.  Kevin was happy because Jonathan snuck in three Killian’s.  He felt like he was back in College hiding his beer every time a nurse came in.  He stayed for a little bit and then when the nurses came in to fix the babies heart monitors, he took off.

Kevin enjoying his Killians

I remember one night while I was sleeping, there was a lot of commotion outside of my room.  I woke up scared because I thought they were coming in to get me to deliver my babies.  That is the scariest feeling in the world.  So the next morning, I asked what would happen if I had to be rushed in for an emergency C-Section?  They said there would be a bunch of people that would rush in to my room.  They would turn me on my side to see if that helped the heart rate, and if that didn’t work, I would be rushed in the O.R.  They would put me under general anesthesia and my babies could be born within 5 min or less.  I needed to know what to expect if that were to happen so I could prepare myself mentally for it.

I was able to take showers while in the hospital but I have to tell you that those were the scariest showers I have ever taken.  Although it felt good to wash my hair and shave my legs, the possibility of my babies going under while I was not being monitored was always in the back of my mind.  So while I was getting clean, my babies could potentially be dying and that was an awful feeling.  Dr. Jaekle said that there is no point in letting myself feel crappy physically if I can help it.  My emotional state was already feeling crappy so if I could feel good on the outside, he wanted to me do so.  He also said that there was no use punishing the staff by not taking a shower.  He was such a jokester.

Through this entire process, the issue of going back to Columbus was in question.  We wanted so badly to have them NOT born in Cincinnati.  If we could get back to Columbus to Riverside Hospital, that would make it so much easier since we live there and Kevin could go back to work and if they were born in Cincinnati, that meant I was there until they were discharged from the NICU.  They usually say babies are in there until around their DUE date which would have been end of March.  Other than that Saturday morning that Nathan’s heart decelerated a bunch, the heart monitoring had been very decent.  We kept asking the Doctors, “What would it take for you to allow us to go back to Columbus?”  They said they would like to see a few days of excellent heart monitoring as well.  They told us that if we did get to that point, that that is a risk that Kevin and I would have to be willing to take.  There were no hospitals between Cincinnati and Columbus.  So in that 2-hour drive, our babies could die and we would have no way of knowing it.  Going by ambulance was also a risk because at this stage, there is an entire TEAM of people who need to be there for a delivery.  It would be about 5 people for each baby and then a team of people for me.  So even being in an ambulance would be fatal to the babies.   

That Monday and Tuesday, the 9^th and 10^th, the boys had very good heart monitoring.  They asked me if I would like to do intermittent monitoring on Wednesday.  Again that was 1 hour monitoring for 3-4 times a day.  They said if we could pass all monitoring on Wednesday and on Thursday, then we could go back to Columbus, POTENTIALLY, on Friday.  Although I was nervous, if the Doctors thought we were good enough to do intermittent, then I would trust them and do intermittent monitoring on Wednesday.