I went from struggling to get pregnant, to naturally pregnant with boy girl twins. Being my first pregnancy, everything about my experience was different and new.
Looking ahead I knew it would be hard to set a date for the beginning of my maternity leave from teaching. I told my district it would be a few weeks before my due date, being that a due date doesn’t mean much for twins. I ended up needing to go on leave at only 30 weeks because of my gestational diabetes, and risk for preeclampsia. I did everything I could to keep them in as long as I could. Multiple false alarms over the course of a few weeks. Then one morning my BP was 180/110 and not dropping. Being just short of 36 weeks, I had to be ambulanced from my local hospital to a higher level facility that had a NICU. None of the midwives or doctors I had been seeing my whole pregnancy would be there for me. Everyone would be brand new.

At 7:00 and 7:02pm my beautiful twins were born. 35w4d and they were still 6lbs each!
I got to hold my son, and kiss my daughter briefly before I started to get sick. I vomited every 15 minutes for the next 4 hours, before they had to sedate me so that I wouldn’t rip my stitches or lose all the bile in my stomach.

I didn’t come to until 10am the next morning. I was too weak to hold my own babies, and I was continually losing blood. Enough that led to 3 transfusions. My legs were in compression sleeves. My face is so puffy in the few pictures that were taken of me that I don’t recognize myself.

All I remember from that time was watching the nurses and my husband take care of my babies, and I couldn’t do anything.

I was referred to physical therapy because it took more than 3 days to get me up and walking.

Just as I thought we were all getting out of the woods, my daughter was rushed to NICU for apnea of prematurity. I wasn’t well enough to go to her. Once I was, I was wheel(chaired) to her crib side and couldn’t stand up to kiss her without help. I remember clinging there, crying, knowing that nurses were caring for her around the clock while I couldn’t do much but lie down or sit in a chair.

My son and I were discharged after 5.5 days, and I slowly recovered. Every NICU visit meant a wheelchair for me, for the sheer size of the hospital.
I got stronger, and so did my daughter. On the 15th day, all 4 of us went home.

It took weeks to wean me off my BP meds, and a few scares with a HR that was too low for comfort. It took a year for a PTSD diagnosis, nearly 3 years for neurology to find meralgia paresthetica in my legs and get a physical therapy referral.