Our Family: Happy 11th to the "Tweeners"!

Oh how I love my twinners! They are so amazing to me. It seems so hard to believe that 11 years ago, we were going through the most horrible, wonderful week of our lives. In a nutshell, we were married 7 years with no children and had tried every infertility treatment under the sun. Finally, IVF, the mother of all infertility treatments, worked for us and we were beyond thrilled to find out that we were pregnant with twins. At 27 weeks, at around midnight, my water broke. I was transferred by ambulance to LDS hospital where I stayed there on bedrest for the next 4 weeks. When I was about 30 1/2 weeks, I went into labor and labored for the next 93 hours, yep, that's not a typo, I said 93 hours, almost 4 days. On the twins birthday, when I was exactly 31 weeks, I woke up with a horrible cough and the twins heartrates kept decelerating. I kept asking all the doctors and nurses to listen to my lungs and nobody would, they were more worried about the babies. Finally, that afternoon, because the babies were doing so bad, they decided to do an emergency c-section. I asked again for someone to listen to my lungs and they claimed there was no time. They got me to the OR and the nurse put the sat monitor on my finger and found that my sats were in the 60's, they are supposed to be at least 90. The anesthesiologist refused to give me an epidural with my sats that low and then I listened to an argument between the perinatologist and the anesthesiologist that ended with the perinatologiest saying, "If you don't give her an epidural now and we don't deliver those babies right now, we'll lose all three." Comforting! I felt a lot of my c-section but was too sick to care. They delivered my tiny babies and whisked them right into the NICU through a window in the delivery room. I never saw them. I went straight to ICU where, for the next several hours, it was utter chaos, nurses and doctors running and yelling at each other and at me. They ran test after test and couldn't determine what was wrong with me, they just knew I was sick and not getting better. They brought Poloroids of the twins to me, Cy was 3 lbs. 10 oz. and Sayer was 2 lbs. 4 oz. They decided to put in a central line so they could get medicine directly to my heart, and that's when I checked out. I was in a coma and on life support for the next three days. Later I found out that I had ARDS (Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome) that has a 60% fatality rate. I was released from the hospital when the twins were 6 days old and then they were transferred to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center when they were a week old. They stayed there for the next five weeks and were released when they were almost 6 weeks. Cy was 6 1/2 pounds and Sayer was 3 1/2 pounds. Yes, we brought a 3 1/2 pound baby home with us! We look back now and wonder how we did that. Crazy! As I'm writing this, I realize there's so many details that I remember that I don't want to forget. Hmmm, I'm going to have to get it all written down.

Bottom line, their very existence on this earth is amazing to me and nothing short of a miracle. I'm so thankful for them and then to think of all that they are able to accomplish, it's even more amazing to me. It is truly an honor to be their mom!

They had a great birthday.

Grandma and Grandpa Dunkley gave Cy an electronic board that he can make all sorts of electronic contraptions with. Do I even need to say it? He loves it!