Twin vaginal birth experiences

[Glitterbug86]

Hi. Was wondering if any of you who had/attempted a vaginal twin birth would share your experience please?

I was wondering things like (in case of DCDA twins), do you deliver the first placenta before the second baby? With 1 baby they give you something to help that along since the baby is already out, but I guess they can't with multiples? How long did it take to deliver first baby, placenta, second baby? If getting an epidural is that given at 4cm?

I have a 21 month old who I had a vaginal delivery with. Spontaneous labour at 38 weeks, 8cm when I went into triage, no epidural, just gas and air. I did plan to try to go without epidural, but didn't realise I would be so far along when I went in.

I hope to have a vaginal birth with my twins (and that's the hospitals recommendation), but with epidural this time. I'm 30 weeks and the first is head down. The second is somewhat transverse at the moment but was head down before that. I would like to have a better idea of what to expect

The recommendations for breech babies to mostly be delivered by c-section is to increased risks of the head getting stuck. This risk doesn't apply to a 2nd twin being born breech after the first has been safely delivered. I suspect that nowadays most vaginal breech deliveries are of second twins.

That said, it is also not uncommon I believe, for a 2nd twin to need delivering by c-section after the first is born vaginally.

My breech was my second twin. If my first twin was breech which she was but luckily turned around before delivery I would've had to have a c-section.
With twins who are born vaginally just because the first one is out doesn't mean all the time the second will come out and may end up being a c-section for the other twin.

I had a team of about 12 doctors just because it was a vaginal twin birth and everyone was needed for different roles. Once my first twin was born they actually held the second twin in position so he didn't flip around with all the extra space.

Very straightforward twin delivery - went into hospital planned for an inducement at 37 weeks, was working up to the day before (was worried about getting by during maternity leave). After about 8 hours walking around and up and down stairs to get things moving, I received an epidural as standard without having to beg for it like I had with my previous pregnancy. Fell asleep for about an hour, woke up and started to push immediately, didn’t have time for the cast of thousands to join us as had been advised so just me, DH and midwife. DD1 was born head down and the midwife head DD2 in place so that she wouldn’t wriggle around and get tied up in umbilical cord. DD2 born 8 mins after DD1. Was in hospital room after about 2 hours and went home the next day. Both DDs were 7.5lb and fine. Good luck! I was worried about twins being a ‘high risk’ pregnancy and birth but it was very straightforward- think it helped that I already had a DC so everything was a bit looser so to speak!

Mine was chaotic. DS1 was born in 3 hours with a bit of a panic about heart rate, which was a surprise and I had PPH so that meant I had to be in hospital for DC2.

DC2 turned out to be twins. I got little info from the hospital except they insisted I would have an epidural (which I knew they could not do in a short time) and that "all births are different" when I mentioned DS1 was 3 hours.

At 35 wks, after losing my mucus a couple of days before and being monitored and told to come in with my first contraction, I woke up with contractions 3 minutes apart and rang the hospital at 4.30am and the midwife told me to come in at 9 o'clock. I told her I had been told to come straight in and got in for 5.30am. A young doctor broke my waters at 6.30 under instruction from the registrar who was in bed (no one told me what he was doing until we got to the 'pass the amnio hook stage 🙄 I thought he was taking a long time to work out how dilated I was).

DD1 was born in the side room about 30 minutes later with mostly just DH helping as the midwife had run off to get the rubber gloves - she got there for the finish - then there was a muddly move over to a big delivery room where DD2 was born (she turned the right way round) and the staff that were supposed to be there arrived.

Placenta came after - used traction which was weird - it was fused or possible one large placenta.

I managed to get DD1 back off the young doctor who was nursing her in the corner and everything got tidied up and I got new midwives as the staff changed over. DD1 had a bit of a sticky lung problem so they got the paediatric registrar back and they went to SCBU.

It turned out that even though I managed to get in to the hospital, they were still planning on delivering them at 9am when the days staff came in 🤷‍♀️

So, 35+ weeks, no epidural, no big bleed, no stitches, babies healthy and happy but ended up staying in 2 weeks for feeding because their sucking reflex wasn't too good.

This was a few years ago and I keep expecting my local hospital to turn out to be one of the ones like Morecambe etc. :(