Part I written 6:36am, Thursday, April 23, 2009
Shortly after we found out there was a viable pregnancy happening Reese had given us an “Expecting” clock which counted down the months, weeks and days until the babies’ arrival. We kept it on the kitchen counter at home and looked at if every day during the pregnancy. We kept it on the nightstand once we moved into the hotel. The only thing that apparently did not register with us was that it had an actual alarm in it that would go off when the big day rolled around. At midnight. So at midnight last night a lullaby started to play. We still had 3 hours and 45 minutes until we had to get up, but it didn’t really matter anyway since we both were tossing and turning all night long. But it was a very appropriate way to start the day.
At 3:45am we got out of bed and started to get ready. My nerves were shot and the day had just begun. Today was THE day. Would everyone be alright? Would the surgery go okay? Would Reese’s recovery go okay? Would the babies be okay? How would the hospital staff handle our “situation”? When would we see the babies after they were born? When would we see Reese after the delivery? My mind was spinning and so was my stomach.
We headed out of the hotel at 4:45am and drove the handful of lights to the hospital. When we arrived we went up to Labor & Delivery and we could see Reese and Riley through the doors already checking in. She saw me and waved us in. They were filling out forms and she was not pleased that she was the one who needed to sign them because she felt they were forms that we should sign, like whether or not to circumcise, whether to have the babies photos on the web nursery. But we had planned for this. We knew that we would be lucky to get whatever parental recognition we could get because this wasn’t the normal situation and I wasn’t the one delivering the babies. The nurse insisted that Reese needed to sign the paperwork and so Reese insisted that the nurse first ask us all of the questions and have us answer them and then she signed what they said she had to sign.
After all the paperwork was taken care of the nurse took one look at me and said “wow, you look more nervous than she does!” (which probably seemed a little crazy since Reese was the one about to undergo major surgery).
Reese and Riley said that they would see us soon and were escorted to their room by a nurse and we took our place in the waiting room. We had no major expectations about whether or not we would get a room, but about a half hour later, a very nice nurse gave us a room all the way at the end of the hall of one of the two L&D wings. We were told that they were having a bit of a bed crunch and if the situation arose (even in the middle of the night) we would have to give up our room. We completely understood this of course because the room would be needed for someone delivering a baby and I was not. But for now, we are in a room (and it is huge!). And it is now 5 minutes to 7:00am. We are heading out to the waiting room where we will stay until we are told that we can go to the nursery where we will see our babies for the very first time…
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Part II written much, much later
At 7:00am we were back in the waiting room outside of a set of doors that led to the hallway with the two maternity operating rooms. Riley was there in his scrubs waiting for the doctors to complete Reese’s anesthesia prep. The three of us stood there nervously chatting. I was trying my best to not hyperventilate. Obviously nothing is normal in the gestational surrogacy process because a pregnancy does not usually involve more than two people. But this was one of those moments where you stopped and thought, wow. Here was a man getting ready to go watch his wife go through major surgery for us so that our babies could come into this world. After already seeing his wife carry a pregnancy with not one but two babies. And Reese was in the operating room only a few hundred feet away about to have an operation to deliver our boys that she had carried for so long with all of the discomforts that go along with it. It was beyond overwhelming to be there in that moment.
After about 10 minutes Riley was called back and we knew that at any moment in the next half hour or so, our babies would be here. We had just been told to wait outside the doors, so we did as we were told. We were frozen to our seats and our eyes were glued to the doors. The first time the doors opened we nearly jumped off the bench where we were sitting, but we realized it was a construction worker. The doors opened again, and again, and again, each time with another worker in a hard hat with some large tool or another. It became almost comical with the number of times the doors opened and the number of construction workers coming and going. We were hoping they were not part of the delivery process! Finally I had to go to the bathroom so bad (happens frequently when I’m really nervous). And then my husband took a turn.
The moment he returned from the bathroom the doors opened and there were at least 5 nurses (things happened fast so I couldn’t tell you how many exactly) and Riley. Reese had sent Riley out to follow us and snap photos since she wouldn’t be there at the time when we would meet our babies for the first time. 2 of the nurses were carrying babies who were screaming their little heads off. One of the nurses was waving us towards them and said “Follow us!!!”
We both burst into tears immediately realizing that those screaming babies were OUR screaming babies. It was the most surreal moment as we blindly followed their screams through the hallways to the nursery.
Once in the nursery the nurses continued to work on the babies and do further assessments. They had done the Apgar tests in the delivery room (which I believe were 8 and 9 but I was in a bit of a fog when I was told those numbers)
Baby B had been tightly swaddled and was quickly handed over to me. I was pretty much like a deer in the headlights (well, a crying deer in the headlights). I knew this was my baby, but it was my baby?? Really?! I just kept looking at the little bundle in disbelief.
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Baby A had to be put under an oxygen tent because he had been delivered bottom first and had swallowed some fluid on the way out. (We were told they both were peeing all over the place during the delivery!) I then handed Baby B over to his dad (also a crying deer in the headlights) and went to Baby A to hold his hand.
There were so many people in the small nursery room and so much was going on it was just absolute chaos. But such happy chaos. All of the nurses were so wonderful and so excited for us and were so helpful in answering all of our questions since we had a million!
They immediately asked us if we had names and who was who. We had actually chosen names the night we found out we were expecting two boys. We hadn’t made a final decision as to who would be who and said we would wait until we saw them to make the decision. But it only took about a minute to decide that Baby A would be Mason and Baby B would be Ethan. Mason had been a name we had wanted to use if we had a boy for several years so we thought it fitting that he be the first born (even if by only 1 minute).
Once the names were settled the nurses proceeded to take Ethan’s weight (7 pounds 7 ounces!) and dad got photos of the weighing. The nurses started to get him cleaned up while another set of nurses monitored Mason’s breathing (it was very quick because of the fluid) and worked on weaning him off of the oxygen. They also weighed Mason and I got photos of his weighing (7 pounds 12 ounces!). They measured both babies and Mason was 19 ½ inches long and Ethan was 19 inches long.
I got to give Ethan his very first bath only about an hour or so after he was born.
They then checked his suck reflex which was very strong and they gave him his first bottle and he gulped down 15 ml right away.
Both Mason and Ethan had borderline blood sugar so they were both given Dum Dums lollipops (no joke) to increase their sugar levels. It was pretty funny seeing brand new babies sucking on a lollipop! My husband asked what flavor it was, but the nurse said she wasn’t sure – it was a mystery flavor!
The pediatrician we had chosen (who was the pediatrician Reese uses for her kids) came to the nursery to visit the babies and check on them for us. They had heel sticks and the blood was sent to the labs. The neonatologist had come in to check on Mason to make sure the fluid in his lungs wasn’t enough for him to spend time in the NICU but he said that it was up to the pediatrician because things looked pretty good to him. The pediatrician said that he looked just fine and should be able to leave the nursery in a while after being fully weaned off oxygen and they had a chance to monitor him a little more.
After Ethan was declared “good to go” we were able to take him back to our room. Mason had to stay in the nursery a while longer while they monitored him after weaning him off of the oxygen. He ended up staying a few hours longer. We took Ethan back to our room and had a moment alone where we looked at each other in disbelief that we now had two babies. We were torn because we wanted to be with Mason and with Ethan at the same time but the nursery was in another wing of the same floor and the security bracelets would go off if they weren’t taken quickly through a particular route (done best with the help of a nurse) and we didn’t want to bug everyone every little whipstitch so we went to check on him just a few times while he was still being monitored.
Riley had followed us to the nursery to take photos so we knew that Reese was doing really great (I mean, considering the fact that she just had such a big surgery and delivered two huge babies). We waited until we got the all clear and then went to visit Reese in her room with Ethan. She looked good though we knew she was exhausted from the delivery. We didn’t want to intrude on her recovery but we wanted so badly to see for ourselves that she was doing okay and for her to see the miracle babies she had carried. We were sad we couldn’t bring both Mason and Ethan at the same time, but we had to wait for them to spring Mason and didn’t want to wait any longer to see Reese, so we went with Ethan only.
It was strange walking into the room rolling Ethan in his bassinet over to Reese’s bedside. She had been carrying them for the past 9 months and now we were bringing them to her to see and it had all happened so quickly. Reese was her usual amazing self and was just so happy to see the babies and to finally see us together with our babies. I kept asking her if she wanted to hold Ethan and of course she said she did want to hold the babies and would, but first, more than anything she wanted to see us hold our babies and to see us as a family because that’s why she did this. She is such an amazing person.
We spent some time in Reese’s room, we fed Ethan, and we took a few trips back to visit Mason before we were told they were giving Mason his first bath without us! Ethan stayed with Reese and Riley for a visit while we rushed back really quick to see the tail end of Mason’s bath.
I wasn’t too upset about the fact that we didn’t get to do the bath ourselves because the most important thing was that he was getting his bath which meant he was going to get to leave the nursery. They also gave him his first bottle and he gulped down 20 mls.
They bundled him up and we rolled him back to Reese’s room to join his brother.
Eventually Reese needed to get some much-needed rest, so we headed back to our room with our babies to sit and stare and marvel at them. We made a few phone calls to family and friends to let them know how wonderful everyone was doing and then we just spent some time alone together with our new babies. The boys did look pretty similar at first glance, but we got to spend a lot of time looking them over and seeing all of their many differences. Mason weighed more and looked slightly bigger overall, but they had so many other unique features and just looked like such a mix of me and my husband, it was incredible. We fed our babies and changed diapers and held them and watched them sleep next to each other in their shared bassinet.
In the afternoon Reese’s children and her parents (who had flown in to help) came for a visit and we took the babies to Reese’s room so that we could show them off. Reese’s kids are so great with babies and were so excited to finally see them on the outside. Even her two year old held Mason (on the bed supervised of course) and was just so adorable grinning from ear to ear and looking down at Mason and saying “Babies!!” Reese’s dad brought some Taco Bell to eat which was very fitting since that’s what the babies liked to eat after all of their appointments with the peri and the OB :)
We went back again in the evening to visit and Riley had gotten the boys their very first birthday cake with two zeros for the numbers!
He also had rushed home to print off a photo he took of my husband and I and the two babies, which he put in a beautiful frame they had gotten for us that read “The Love of a Family is Life’s Greatest Blessing.” They also gave us a few outfits for the boys as gifts. They are incredibly thoughtful and generous people anyway, but they just went above and beyond to do that for us that very first day the boys were born and while Reese was in her first day of recovery!
We headed back to our room to let Reese and Riley get some sleep. The boys had their first big meconium poops that night which was very exciting for us ;) We knew that with two babies it would be hard taking turns caring for both babies at once on our own at night and that we would choose to both get up for every feed and diaper change once we got home. So in order to start off on the right foot and get a few hours of sleep, we took advantage of the hospital nursery and both nights the babies went to sleep in the nursery between feedings and then were brought back to our room for us to feed them and change their diapers. I just didn’t want to miss one feed or one diaper change, but knew that if the babies were sleeping anyway and there were trained specialists watching them breathe for me, we should try to get some sleep too because otherwise I would sit there all night long watching their chests rise and fall and most likely putting a mirror under their noses to be certain. I figured I’d save that for when we got home.
The next morning we visited Reese and Riley and found out they were having a room shortage and that they were going to move them down to the floor below us. I was so upset because I didn’t want Reese to be disturbed like that. She was the one who had given birth and the one who needed to heal. We wanted to take the room downstairs or just stay in the waiting room if needed, but the nurse said the babies had to remain on the current floor and could not go downstairs for security reasons. If we were to stay in the waiting room all night the babies would have to spend the entire night in the nursery or spend the night in Reese’s room. The nursery wasn’t a perfect answer because they were not guaranteed to have the room for them there and we couldn’t be in there with them all night. And Reese needed to recover from her surgery instead of being up all night listening to two very noisy little babies sleeping (trust me, they are very noisy sleepers!). None of the solutions seemed good to me, but Reese and Riley decided to move down to the next floor so we could keep our room with the babies and they would come up to visit. Another incredibly generous gesture on their part.
Also on that day the paperwork started flowing. It turns out that the nurse who insisted Reese sign all of the paperwork for things like photos and circumcision, had not been correct on that and they needed us to re-sign all of the paperwork. Even though Reese insisted that that was the way it should have been from the beginning, that original nurse did not think that was protocol and had made her sign everything anyway. The other thing we found out was that the birth certificate was a little more of an issue then we thought it would be even with the pre birth order we had. The state required 2 birth certificates, 1 with the medical information from the hospital for the birth mom and then they would do another one with our information. I didn’t quite like how this sounded, nor did Reese and Riley. Especially after everything we had done with the attorney for the pre birth order. I called our attorney and he spoke with the hospital staff member who handled the vital records and hopefully sorted it out. (Right now we still do not have birth certificates, over 2 months later, but I have spoken to the vital records department and it is supposedly that their office is completely incompetent at the moment, which is what one of their staff told me, and their system is completely messed up – so I’m holding my breath for that to be finished so that they can also finally get social security numbers issued)
The nurse who came in for rounds in the morning told us that the Billy Ruben levels of the boys were slightly elevated and that since we had such a long drive home with them, the pediatrician would prefer to do some pro-active light treatment over the next 24 hours. So the boys started their morning under the tanning lights with their Velcro foam shades on. They were not big fans of it that is for sure! They liked to be all cozy in their clothes and swaddled in their blankets and for the billy lights they had to have nothing on but their diapers. It was very upsetting for them both and upsetting for us to see them so upset.
My parents had flown in that day to see their new (and first!) grandchildren so my husband went to the airport to pick them up while I stayed with the babies in our room. I was sad that my parents wouldn’t get as much time to hold the babies at the hospital since they had to stay under the Billy lights except for during feedings and diaper changes (and the hearing tests they had done), but I knew that they would know it was important and would just be happy to see them at all. They got back from the airport and my parents got to see the boys for the first time. They just couldn’t believe their eyes. We let them feed the boys and they assisted in diapers. My dad was just so afraid we would break them because they were so small and was so scared to feed them. He kept telling us “be careful!” He had definitely forgotten what it was like to have tiny babies around since it had been 30 odd years since my brother and I had shown up. He was just a ball of excitement and nerves. When Reese and Riley came up to visit later that afternoon Reese noticed my dad wasn’t eating the dinner we had for everyone and he just said “I’m too excited to eat!!” My parents were not only excited to meet their grandsons, but were also so excited to meet Reese and Riley. We had a nice visit and then Reese and Riley headed back to their room to rest.
My husband spent a little time with the babies and my parents while I took my laptop down to Reese and Riley’s room. They had invited me down to hang out for a bit and to hop online since the internet in our room and on our floor had not been working at all.
The babies continued their light therapy until the next morning. The night was rough as Ethan had such a hard time with being undressed and under the lights. His foam glasses kept sliding off and having to be readjusted and he was just not a happy camper. So my husband sat under the light, holding him in his arms and that did the trick. The two of them stayed under there for hours. The nurse was afraid that Ethan wouldn’t be warm enough because he was a little further away from the lights in my husband’s arms, but they took his temp and he was roasty toasty. My husband is a very good heater :)
The next morning the babies were freed from their light therapy (after having several heal sticks over the past 24 hours to check levels). Reese was discharged mid-morning from the hospital and we waited until the pediatrician came by to give her final okay to head home. The hospital photographer took their official photos and we worked on cleaning up and packing up in preparation to leave the hospital. The nurse came by and went through all of the release information and we put the babies in their car seats for the first time and they escorted us downstairs.
We drove the short distance to the hotel and the babies took a nap in their pack-n-play bassinet before we headed over to Reese and Riley’s house to have dinner with the family.
It was so strange to be walking into their home for the first time with our babies in tow. We had a great evening with them and the babies and it was equally strange when we had to leave. We knew we would see them again often in the future, but now it would be the 4 of us visiting and that would take some getting used to. The 4 of us!
We spent that night at the hotel and the next morning my dad had to fly back home and my mom made the long drive back home with us. The 7 hour drive took use about 12 hours in total because of the stops needed with two small babies who have to feed and have diaper changes so frequently. We hav good friends who live at the half-way point between our home and Reese’s, so we stopped there for a longer pit stop to regroup. And then we finally made it home and we have been knee deep in bottles and diapers ever since and we couldn’t possibly be happier with our new life.
I think I sounded like a broken record with my thank yous to Reese, but it was because no matter how many times I said it, it never seemed like enough, and it never will feel like enough, because she had made us parents to two beautiful, healthy, huge baby boys and our family is now complete because of what she did.
Thank you so much Reese. We will be forever grateful.
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