Delivery Date has been Set!

We have had some huge developments in the last few days regarding the birth of the babies! It’s a lot to process and very overwhelming but I’m going to do my best to summarize so everyone is up to date and knows what’s coming! The doctor came by for the regular check in on Sunday and dropped the bomb that he thinks it might be best to move the delivery up by a week or so. I think we were so surprised to hear that that we couldn’t really process fast enough to ask for clarification. Luckily, I was quick enough to ask if he could come back later that day for a scheduled sit down to talk through the delivery which we hadn’t really had a chance to do yet. So we had time throughout the day to prepare our thoughts and questions before he came back and I was very thankful that we had the time. Our main question was, why do you think we need to consider moving the delivery date up? Has something changed? Are you having more concerns about the babies or seeing data from their tracings that is concerning you?

The doctor came back about 7:30 on Sunday night and explained to Justin and I that the goal of making it to 34 weeks was always kind of a pipe dream, an ideal if everything went absolutely perfectly throughout my inpatient stay. And while the babies have performed remarkably well, it hasn't been without a few concerns here and there. About every 7-10 days one of the babies will have a little incident that arises some concerns but they usually recover very quickly and the days that follow are often quite flawless in terms of their tracing. One such incident just to give you an idea happened last Thursday when baby A’s heart rate hung out in the 180s, which is too fast, for about 10 minutes and then spent another 10 minutes dipping down from the 180s to the 120s or so about once a minute. The incident before that involved baby B’s heart rate taking bigger dips about every 15 minutes for an hour and then two more the following hour. After each of these incidents has resolved, the concerns seem to go away and everyone seems at ease with their status.

But just the simple fact that these incidents have occured at all are encouraging the doctors to consider a sooner delivery just to play it safe. We decided on a delivery date of November 21st at 9am which is less than a week earlier than we had originally hoped/planned for and I think Justin and I both left the conversation feeling fairly comfortable with that decision. But in the hours and days that have followed we have spent lots of time talking about what is best for the babies. We want every decision to be made based on what is the very best decision for the health and safety of the babies. From the get go, our opinion has always been that the longer the babies can stay in, the better. And while we’re taking the doctors’ recommendations to consider an earlier delivery very seriously, we also want to keep an open mind to the idea that the best thing for the babies might be to try to buy them a few more days in utero before we bring them out into the world. We have had a few flawless days of tracing so far this week and we’re holding out hope that with a few more perfect, incident free days, the doctors might agree to try to wait til Friday the 23rd or even Monday the 26th to deliver them.

The very complicated part of making that decision is that the very last position we want to put ourselves into is an emergency situation. But in all reality, we have been dealing with that possibility during this entire pregnancy. We have lived each day with the knowledge that an emergent delivery could become necessary at anytime. I have also been feeling an incredible pressure in the last few days since scheduling the delivery to meet expectations or to stick to this decision just because it’s on the calendar. Our bottom line though, mine and Justin’s, is that we’re going to do whatever is best for the babies no matter what. If that means keeping them in until Monday the 26th, then that’s what we’ll do. If it means delivering them on the 21st or sooner, then that’s what we’ll do. But it is most important to fight for whatever will give them the best outcome once they are delivered. We want to minimize the obstacles that they will be up against in the NICU. We want to bring them home thriving as soon as possible. And as we currently understand it, the longer we can keep them in utero safely, the more likely we will be able to meet those goals.

Arriving at the end of this pregnancy is incredibly overwhelming. I can’t even begin to gather the words to describe the feeling to you. It’s just the beginning of a million parenting decisions but it feels so massive. Picking the best/safest time to deliver them… luckily we have doctors that we trust immensely but I also feel like we have to trust our intuition and make an informed decision that reconciles their recommendations with what our parental intuition is telling us. But as of today, this is where we are: delivery set for 11/21 and a hope that babies will behave perfectly and buy themselves 4 or so extra days on the inside before the join us earthside. Thank you to every single person who is keeping us all in your thoughts. We will be doing our best to keep you in the loop over the next week to 10 days as we anticipate the birth of the babies!