An eventful Christmas morning!

Where do I begin?! I'm going to have to go back a little further than Christmas so bare with me.

So I am officially NOT working anymore, but that hasn't meant I've been able to slow down! I was quite busy leading up to Christmas trying to get the house cleaned up and decorated and getting all the last minute baby gear I thought we needed (I had a bunch of coupons that expired on Christmas Eve) and trying to make our first Christmas away from family not so "hard" on us. For those who might not know, because of being preggo with twins I was told not to travel after 27 weeks gestation, meaning we were going to be spending Christmas in North Carolina. It was a first for both of us, but we knew why we were doing it and weren't upset. As long as the girls stay healthy and growing, and we want to keep them in utero for as long as possible. Which brings me to another point, when you are right around 31 weeks with twins, don't try to make over 2 dozen gingerbread men from scratch...it might put you in labor! Don't worry I'm about to go into detail. ;)

Let me start with all of the events that led up to my eventful Christmas morning...

So Christmas Eve I decided I wanted to make Christmas cookies. And what is more Christmas than gingerbread men? I had bought two rolls of gingerbread cookie dough thinking that it would cut down on a majority of the work and that it would be a breeze for me to roll out and use my cookie cutter to make the men and bake them. Well, I was wrong. I think I spent three hours trying to roll out the dough and cut out the men, but they kept sticking to the counter or breaking. When it was all said and done I ended up with around 30 little men when there should've been closer to 40. Luckily I gave myself plenty of time to bake them before I needed to get dressed for Christmas Eve service.
Service was nice (different (for me) since it was Methodist) but I still enjoyed it and they sang some of my Christmas hymns and had the candle light vigil at the end where we sang Silent Night.
Once we got home I made a batch of Mom's individual cheesecakes and a loaf of pumpkin bread all for Christmas day breakfast and lunch. Well while the cheesecakes were baking I made Rush take who-knows-how-many pictures with me in front of the tree because we were dressed nice from church. Lets just say we both were pretty frustrated by the time we got one that was satisfactory to me. By now it is getting very close to midnight and my pumpkin bread is still baking and I noticed that my lower back was starting to really hurt. I tried laying on the couch while I waited, but it didn't really relieve any of the ache. Somewhere in the back of my head I heard some small warning bells, but I didn't want to jump to conclusions so once the bread was out, I went to bed.
That only lasted an hour and a half before the ache and smaller bladder woke me up. Knowing I am always at risk for preterm labor and that a lower back ache is a sign of preterm labor (and after talking to my sis-in-law earlier that day about a friend of hers who had her baby at 31 weeks because she had ignored the signs of preterm labor) I decided to call the Labor & Delivery and asked them what they thought. After a few minutes on the phone they decided I should come in just to be on the safe side. So at 3:30 Christmas morning I drove myself to the hospital. Before anyone gets on to Rush for not driving me, I did tell him where I was going but told him to go back to bed. I wanted one of us to get a full night's rest because I still planned on eating breakfast with his aunt, uncle, and cousins that morning.
So once at the hospital they hooked me up to monitors to follow my contractions and the girls' heartbeats. I couldn't feel the contractions but they said they were more like labor contractions than Braxton-Hicks so around 5:30 they gave me a shot to stop them, and were going to watch me for another hour before they sent me home. The contractions stopped, but one of the side effects is that it made me feel jittery and my heart race. BUT on the very bright side, I didn't ignore any preterm labor signs (that could've meant Christmas babies for us) and they were able to stop what little labor I was in. On a side note: I did get to hear Camp Lejeune's first Christmas baby crying! It was very sweet to hear that healthy cry.

So I happily left still large and pregnant, and I have one heck of a Christmas morning story for those girls when they are older! :)

*Since this post ended up so long I will be posting later about how the rest of Christmas day went down, and all the other events that have happened up to today. :) I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year!