05.13.01

05.13.01
The babies have arrived!!!! At 7:49pm on May 6th, (one week ago tonight) Keenan Jeffrey came into the world! Twenty four minutes later at 8:13pm, his brother, Ronan Jeffrey followed suit! Keenan weighed in at 4 lbs 2.4 oz and 17 1/2 inches long. Ronan weighed in at 4 lbs 5.8 oz and 18 1/2 inches long. They arrived nearly seven weeks early, but they are doing great! It has been a full week now, Mom has come home and the boys will be coming home soon. They are absolutely beautiful! (don’t take my word for it, check out the pictures) Faith has been keeping a daily journal that will be posted on the twins page shortly. There are many more pictures that will also be posted shortly. If I can manage to edit some video, I will also post a couple of video clips of the boys.

So, the whole story. Faith had been experiencing some high blood pressure as well as a few other symptoms that lead her physician to believe that she was suffering from preeclampsia (sp?) This is a rather serious condition that occurs with some pregnant women with the only cure being delivery. On April 27th, Faith visited the doctor and was promptly placed in the hospital for observation. Due to the preeclampsia, there was a possibility that the doctors would have to take the babies early. In preparation for this, Faith was given a shot of steriods to help develop the babies’ lungs and intestines. However, after two days of observation Faith was allowed to come home on Sunday. About 2am the next morning, She found it very hard to breathe. We rushed back to the hospital to find that a side effect of the steriods and/or the preeclampsia caused her lungs to fill up with fluid. Not a good situation. After a couple of doses of lisix (a diuretic), her breathing improved dramatically. She stayed the night and came back home on Tuesday afternoon. Friday was another doctor’s appointment, and once again she was promptly admitted to the hospital. This time, however, Dr Durer said she would not be getting out until the babies came. Saturday morning they began to administer pitocin to help induce labor. By Sunday afternoon, we needed to make a decision whether or not to have the babies delivered by cesarean. We decided that we would wait a few more hours and see what would happen. Those few hours proved to be just what we needed. At 3:30pm, Faith was dilated to only one centimeter. By 6:45pm she had progressed to four (the contractions were getting longer and more intense). Since she had progressed this far, the doctor ordered the epidural to help block the pain. The anesthesiologist arrived in about five minutes and by 7:10, the epidural was in and beginning to take effect. The timing couldn’t have been closer. By 7:15, Faith was ready and began saying that it was time!!! We rushed into the maternity operating room where a support staff of about twenty people were waiting to assist. Keenan came right out, but over the weekend, Ronan had turned breech (his head was up, instead of down). The nurses spent about twenty minutes trying to get Ronan to turn around so that he could be delivered without a c-section. Ronan decided that he wanted to come into the world in his own way and so he actually came out bottom first! Even the doctor said he was quite surprised to see this! Ronan spent the first night with an oxygen tube to assist his breathing, but that was promptly removed the following day. They both lost a little weight about mid-week, but they have been slowly gaining it back ever since. As is customary, the whole immediate family was called as Faith went into “active” labor. As fast as we went to the O.R., there really wasn’t any time for anyone to get to the hospital, so you could imagine me surprise to find that my brother was in fact, already at the hospital! Apparently, he had a feeling, so he packed up his family and just headed to the hospital. By the time my mom had called him to let him know what was going on, he was already there.