Larry and I climbed into bed at about midnight. Our good night's sleep was short lived, however, because I woke up at 1:00 a.m. when I started gushing fluid everywhere. My water had broken at exactly 36 weeks. It was about 2:00 by the time that we finally made it to the hospital. Luckily, we didn't procrastinate too much longer as I was dilated to a 5 by the time we got there.
Unfortunately, I was not able to deliver vaginally as both babies were in the breech position. By about 4:00 a.m. all of the doctors were ready to deliver. Before going into the delivery room I had Larry and Dr. Baird give me a priesthood blessing. It was so comforting to know that our babies were being delivered by a doctor who was worthy to have the Spirit with him.
Our baby boy was delivered first and then our baby girl. They were so tiny - the boy weighed 4 lbs. 10 oz. and the girl weighed 4 lbs. 3 oz. As I glanced over at them, I noticed that the girl wasn't crying. I really did not think too much of this and later I found out that she didn't breathe for almost four minutes because she had so much amniotic fluid in her lungs. Thank goodness for modern technology or we might not have our precious little girl today.
The next challenge was finding names for our babies. For girl names we had talked about Jennie Mae, Trudy Christine, Jillene Nicole, or Brooklyn Nicole. For boy names we had talked about Jacob Thomas or Taylor Thomas. I was a little bit frustrated, because we had always had a name before we went to the hospital, but nothing clicked for both of us this time.
The Saturday before they were born, Larry had suggested that we name them Benjamin, after King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon, and Gwendolyn, after his grandmother. I had not even considered Benjamin before, but soon grew to like the idea. I just didn't like the idea of them being named "Ben & Gwen".
After they were born, we were pretty sure that we were going to name the boy Benjamin Thomas. Thomas for Larry's great-grandfather, which also means "twin" in Hebrew. But, try as we might, we still couldn't come up with any girl names that we could agree on.
Fortunately, my parents came up the day that they were born. Jeanne suggested that we name the girl Rebekah and call her Bekah, after Rebekah in the Bible. We finally decided that we would call her Rebekah Jillene - Jillene being after me.
The next challenge for the babies was getting them to breathe and eat right. They were both hooked up to a bunch of cords and monitors when they were first born, including oxygen. It was very difficult to hold them in the beginning because, not only were they so small, but you had to fight all of the cords.
Benjamin was grunting a lot in the beginning, because he wasn't breathing right. The nurses had placed them in separate bassinets and someone finally came up with the bright idea to put them together. Benjamin's breathing improved remarkably after they did this. They were both completely off of the oxygen after only 1-2 days.
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