We are now 1 measily day shy of that 24 week survival mark. What a horrible position to be in. Hospital policy prevents them from doing a number of things at this stage. Though we're still a bit confused as to some of the exact procedures at this point, we relied 100% on what we were told (or implied) could and couldn't be done. We had faith in the hospital staff. At no point did we think that we should question what was or wasn't done. We believed in them when they told us there was a chance that the labour would stop.
How do we feel now?? We're not sure. Being angry, asking for answers won't bring back our boys. But I digress...
Back to the story...
After the first shot of morphine wore off I waited about an hour (with very intense contractions...~3 min apart still). Finally at about 3:30 am they gave me a second shot of morphine. This time though the morphine only took the edge off the intense pain of the contractions and by now I was only able to sleep between contractions (approx 1 min 45 seconds).
At 8 am the morphine once again wore off and once again I waited a good hour until again requesting something for the pain. They adminstered another shot of morphine and once again it managed to only take away the worst of the pain. The only upside is it made me woozy enough that falling asleep between contractions was easy.
At 10:30 am the hospital arranged for an ultrasound to measure my cervix. Though I dozed through much of the ultrasound I did once again get to see my beautiful babies. Had I known it would be the last time I saw them moving so freely and lively, I would have fought harder stay awake. Often the technician would have to stop during my contractions but the end result was Baby B had moved closer to the cervix and was persenting feet first (breech). The good news was, though the cervix was shortening, it was still closed.
A few hours later the morphine began to wear off and once again my contractions started getting worse. This time though...no more morphine. They had already given me alot (so they said ;)) and wouldn't give anymore so I waited out the pain. Every 2.5 minutes for the next few hours. Finally a nurse came in and made the decision to give me gas for the pain (I had no idea you could get gas?!?!). That helped calm me down and though I could still feel the contractions, the gas allowed me to relax properly between them and be able to weather the pain.
At around 6 pm the doctor came in and said that she wanted to do a cervix check since there was no way I was having those kind of contractions without dialating. Sure enough, Baby B's foot was through the cervix...there was no stopping his being born.
At that point we were given 3 options.
1) Protect the mom (recommended by the hospital since we were still before the 24 week mark). That meant they would induce labour for both babies in order to guarentee the safest possible outcome for me.
2) Try to save Baby A. Since the rupture Baby B was presenting first, we could try to deliver Baby B (and the method of delivery would pretty much guarantee 0% survival for Baby B) but it would allow a 50% chance that labour would stop and Baby A would survive (at least long enough for steriod shots to work on his/her lungs...ideally 48 hours).
3) Try to save both babies knowing that the survival rate for twins born before 24 weeks was dismal. This method would have resulted in a c-section (since the presenting baby was breech).
We chose option 2 since we had no idea if Baby B's lungs would be developed enough at this point to allow for survival if we opted for a c-section.
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