They’ve just been born. And now what? (1)

I enter the operation theatre and a dozen people are waiting for me. I am frightened. It’s just natural in this situation, isn’t it? I know that it’s a twin birth and there’s a double birthing team, but I find it a bit too much. The anesthetist – who is kidding around – tells me that my blood pressure has suddenly gone up and asks me if I’m nervous. I wonder that this is the first time I have been to a spaceship. And I’ve heard so many things about epidural anesthesia that I freak out just thinking of it. But in fact, I don’t even notice the shot. At this stage, I can’t think of anything else than the fact that I’ll see Ona and Estel in a little while. I’ll be able to check if they are as I have imagined them for all these months.

Imagination had not betrayed me when I found out who was who. We had always said that we’d have an Ona if it was a girl or an Oriol if it was a boy (as you can see, we had not contemplated having two children for a moment. “Only one kid to give it a try”). So we had chosen just one name: Ona. But- what about the other one? A good friend told me not to worry, because the little one herself would tell me what her name was. One day, I found out that her name was Estel. But which is which? How will I know when they are born? I felt the need to identify them while they were in my belly to be able to speak to them and to establish a good communication to understand each other (especially at night, when Ona would not stop moving and would not allow me to sleep at all!).

I’m lying in the operation theatre. Not until they start performing a c-section on me does my mind fully react and then I realise that they’re actually performing a surgical operation. I can only think: “When I come round and the anesthesia wears off I will have a hell of a time”. Because of the feeling that they’re stirring up my body, I have my head in the clouds when the midwife asks me to look to my right because Estel is coming out. I see a ball covered in blood to my right. Suddenly, they put Estel’s face on my cheek. I’ve been imagining what this moment would be like for months, too. Obviously, I do nothing in the way I imagined it. I stare at her. It’s 10:53 in the morning. I don’t have time to react. Three minutes later Ona comes out. They also place her on my cheek. She’s smaller than Estel. I don’t cry. I am so frightened that I can’t be moved right now. My mind can only think about asking whether they are well.

Yes, they’re well. They let me know that they're taking the babies to meet their father. I try to imagine how Jordi will react. Are they just as he imagined them? What will he say? What will he do? Some hours later, he’ll tell me about the funny situation he was in, sitting in the middle of an operation theatre corridor holding a baby on each arm. When people passing by congratulated him, he told them that we were waiting for them to arrive and about all the things we would do together. After a while, he does not recall if it was five minutes or half an hour, he asks for help to go up to our room with the two babies. They will have to wait for me for a while.

PD. I must explain, for all English readers, that 'Ona' means 'wave' in Catalan, my mother tongue. And 'Estel' means 'star'. We found two names closely related to the sea, the wind and the sky...

A matter of hours. Has it been nine months already? They're about to be born

I am 38 weeks and a half pregnant and I'm at the end of my tether. Estel weighs over 3 kg and Ona over 2,5 kgs. They're both fine, and when I was thinking that I'd have to endure this a bit longer by the end of this medical appointment, I leave the surgery with a hospital admission order. We have to be at the hospital before 8 o'clock for admission. It is not until I get there that I become aware that the time has come. However, I’m not very clear on what to expect. I went through that moment as "one thing leads to another" and now I've got some vague recollection of it.

At eleven in the evening oxytocin is not working on me...so we go up to our room. Looking back, perhaps it was at that time when I started to get nervous, because you realise that you don't quite know how things are going to unfold. I obviously thought about my midwife a lot... especially after what I had been told about her in the hospital birthing rooms... it turns out that everyone knows her! And not precisely as an example of great professionalism.

I sleep badly. In fact, right now I can't remember if I slept at all. What I do remember is when my water broke. Throughout my pregnancy I was wondering if I would notice... and I was worried about this, huh? Things that come along with being a first-time mom.  It is one of those things which you don't realise how obvious they are until you're pregnant and go through it. It is one of the strangest sensations that I've felt in my entire life. It was seven o'clock on the morning of December 15 2008, two days before my birthday (and yes, then it dawned on me that I should have programmed the twins' birth on my birthday. Now I'm lucky if people remember to wish me a happy birthday... as we've already celebrated the girls' birthday).

We leave our room and go back to the birthing rooms. The professionals at Taulí Hospital reassure me and calm me down. As matter of fact, I am very satisfied with the follow-up that they've done in the past four months. New tests. Estel is in the right position upside down, but Ona is crosswise. In the end it'll be a C-section. In no time we sign the documents and I am taken to the operation theatre. I realise that I barely take farewell from Jordi, my husband. I'm not aware of the moment. Right now, I am only aware that I have never been in an operation theatre. But I also know that when I leave it, I will never be the same again.