100 Hours

100 hours ago I was relaxing peacefully in bed I my new home away from home: the Antepartum Suite at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. I was all ready to settle into my new life of hospital bedrest. Tuesday had been scary but Wednesday was peaceful and boring, and my only major complaint was that I had some indigestion and gas. 

That night after work, Luis came to visit with his sister and niece. They chatted while I lay there eyeballing the contractions monitor and whining about indigestion. They had hooked me up to the monitor about 36 hours earlier and I refused to let them take me off of it because I was so afraid of going in to pre term labor, even though they told me I was not at risk. 

Lu left around 10:30 to go to his weekly "Boy's Night" (XBox games and manly bonding time with a few of his oldest friends). I was taking care of my bedtime routine when my indigestion started to get pretty uncomfortable. It really felt like I had overdone it with dinner! I called the nurse who got me some heartburn medications and a Gas-X. I took them and decided to get out of bed to go to the restroom one last time before bed. When I sat down, Baby A's amniotic sac fell out. This was the end of my bed rest. It was 11:20 p.m. on Wednesday June 5th.

The next few hours are a blur, but at the moment it felt as if I was frozen in time. I waddled back to bed and yelled for the nurse (who had only left about 5 minutes prior). I explained to her, and she incredulously checked me out. After discovering, to her shock, that I was not in fact exaggerating, she ran to get the on call doctor who had just arrived for duty. He and I had never met. 

It was 11:30 p.m. I was told that I had two choices: wait until my water broke or go for a caesarean. The situation as it stood was that baby a was head down and ready to enter the birth canal. Baby B was breach and nowhere near close to coming out. The odds of Baby B surviving a vaginal delivery were close to nothing, but A would still have a shot if it moved quickly enough. I would also be able to save myself from an ugly c section and preserve my ability to have normal deliveries in the future. The other choice was an emergency classical cesarean. That's when the cut you vertically instead of horizontally. It is not a good thing because it takes longer to heal, is at greater risk for splitting open in the future, and you have to have a section with all future pregnancies. If we did that, we could get both babies out without trauma, quickly. The odds of them surviving delivery were much higher. 

Either way, I was delivering within hours. I was dilated to 6 and fully effaced. The cerclage had ripped out without pain or blood. I had not had a single contraction. There was no decision to be made. I was wheeled into the OR at 11:35, in the same bed I'd been laying in for two days. Luis arrived at 11:45 right as they were finishing my spinal block.  At that point I was dilated to a 7 or 8.

At 11:58 p.m. on Wednesday June 5th, Rosalyn Esperanza Farias came into the world, weighing 1 pound 4 ounces. She was pink and beautiful, and was received by a team of two nurses, a neonatologist, and a respiratory therapist. Luis only got a glimpse of his daughter, but through tears he kissed me and whispered "she's perfect."

They had a harder time getting Baby B out, all squished up and tucked away into a difficult to reach back corner. The doctor had to reach way inside of me and yank the baby out. At 12:02 a.m. on Thursday June 6th, Robert Armando Farias came fighting into this world. Still emotional, Luis followed him into the resuscitation room, where my baby boy had his own team of doctor's nurses, and respiratory therapists waiting for him. Luis says the baby cried as they rushed to intubate him. Babies born at 24 weeks can't cry. They are too small and underdeveloped, but even at 1 pound 2 ounces, my son likes to do things his own way.

 As they cleaned me out and stitched me up, Luis came back to report that the babies had both been successfully intubated and were breathing with the help of a ventilator. They were alive, and despite being impossibly small, they were perfectly formed and surprisingly strong. I had promised them a thousand times throughout my horrible pregnancy that if they really wanted a chance to live, I would walk through the fires of hell to get them far enough along that they'd be given the chance to make that choice themselves. They had fought through multiple hemorrahges, an incompetent cervix, and 11 weeks of stressful bed rest. The were born at the very limit of fetal viability. They fought to stay in long enough to be considered worth saving. Now they are fighting every day for a chance to keep living.

Having micro-preemies is a world in and of itself, full of dark fears, heartbreaking statistics, and moments of sheer terror. I thank you all for you prayers and your vigilance. We have witnessed a thousand miracles and tender mercies from The Lord in the past 100 hours.

 I apologize for not going into details right now. We are living in a state of grace, being cradled in the hands of both earthly and heavenly angels. I don't like talking about the daily battle for survival that my precious babies are facing. It's too close to me. Too powerful, and much too sacred. For this purpose, I have decided not to post pictures, stories, or updates about them on the Internet, and I'd like to ask you to avoid talking about out Babies on line as well. I don't want to cheapen something so tremendous, so beautiful, and so important with Social Media. Please know that prayers are being answered every hour of the day, but that the sustaining prayer is still needed just as much now as they were the twins' first day of life. You can just assume that the situation is always intensive; even when it looks like everything is going fine, there is always something new lurking in the shadows threatening to upset our delicate equilibrium and throw us into a nightmarish situation. You just can't tell if any given day is going to be good, bad, or just ugly. I hold my breath every day until the chief neonatologist does his rounds and reports on the Babies status, then I exhale, try to absorb the newest triumphs and obstacles, and breathe.

We welcome any opportunity to share our blessings with you.  If you wish to visit the babies in the NICU we'd be happy to work with your schedule. We can take up to two visitors at a time, although under 18 is not allowed, and non family members are encouraged to keep visits brief. If you are too far to visit, email and text are the best way to get in touch, although I probably won't be able to answer a ton of questions like "how are they doing." Stuff like that changes from minute to minute.

In response to your offers and questions about what do we need, the answer is honestly that the usual home visits to new moms bearing brownies and onesies aren't much good right now (I will take you up on it in a few months when I'm in need of support at home, promise).  My schedule currently revolves around as much baby time as I can get. I literally have to force myself to leave to eat and sleep. If you live around here and want to run errands or mow our neglected lawn, we'd be thrilled. Otherwise, just please join us in our prayers daily that the Babies' hearts, lungs, brains, and other organs develop, and that they don't get any infections. Your faith and prayers really and truly are the best gift you can give us. It's what our Babies need and we actually need to hold ourselves together right now. 

Thank you for the ocean of support you've given us. We truly appreciate your thoughts and concern. Your prayers carry us from one day to the next. We would sink without you. 

Until we cross this bridge and get to the other side...

With love, 

Camille, Luis, Andrei, Robert, and Rosalyn