We are overjoyed to welcome (A BOY!!) Carter J. into our family! He came exactly 3 weeks early. We were sort of anticipating an early arrival with the early contractions in the pregnancy and bedrest. Tuesday, February 23 I had went to bed quite early (8:45 p.m.) because I was not feeling well. However, this was not uncommon since I had not been feeling well most of the pregnancy. Wednesday morning, February 24, I woke up with contraction like feelings but at first thought they would eventually pass since I had been dealing with them since Christmas. I did have another labor "sign" in the morning, but I won't go into to detail with it, but I looked it up online and it said it could mean labor is beginning or I still could have 1-2 weeks. So that didn't help much! The contractions continued to pick up and get stronger and closer together. They were definitely different and stronger than I had been having during the pregnancy. I slowly continued to get myself ready and see if they would lessen in strength. One surprise to the morning was when I got out of the shower and heard buckets being set down and footsteps walking around on the wood floor in the unfinished nursery! I quickly threw my pj's back on and opened the bathroom door, which is directly across the hall from the nursery, to find the 2 drywallers there to work! We had NO IDEA that they were coming that day! I then got myself dressed and gave Terry a call and told him that I thought today was THE day. He said he had a planning period soon and would start to through some sub plans together and give me a call back to see if he should come home. After I hung up with him I knew he should be coming home but tried to breathe through the contractions, not panic, and just sat on the couch watching the time go by SLOWLY! I was not going to have this baby at home with a couple of drywallers!!!! Terry called back then and I told he needed to get home quickly. The contractions were 5 minutes apart at the point. I didn't have my bag packed yet to go to the hospital so I threw some things in quickly between contractions. He got home and we left quickly. I called the OB department on the way to warn them that we would be there in less than 10 minutes. We got there shortly after 11:00 a.m. I was dialted to 5 cm. when we arrived and given Nubain. I don't remember getting Nubain with Olivia but I may have. The nurse told me that I may feel light headed from it. Well, instantly I got really warm and the room started spinning and getting fuzzy. This continued for 2 hours! The Nubain also made me vomit several times. I also got an epideral. It took awhile for the epideral to work but when it did I could not move or feel any part of my legs. This made it quite difficult to feel to push. They had to back off the epideral a little and that still did not help things. I started feeling extreme back/tailbone pain. Dr. Theobald arrived a little after 2:10 p.m. They were monitoring the baby's heart rate. They did a bit of whispering and didn't share everything with us. She had me rolling from side to side (which was awful) and they found the the baby's heart beat was strongest when I was laying on my left side. However, this position was NOT comfortable for me at all. Dr. Theobald thought the weaker heartbeat and extreme low back pain was because he had flipped face up. They stopped the epideral completely. I was just breathing through all the contractions and couldn't feel to push. I finally got to the point that I would just "try" to push and found that it felt "better" to try to push through the contractions instead of breathe through them without pushing. Well, my apparent pushing was helping and he did start to appear slowly. In the meantime he slowly was flipping himself face down to come out into the world. In doing this, he did come out with the cord loosely wrapped around his neck. He was born at 5:09 p.m.
The labor for my second child was not as easy as I had anticipated it to be. We were surprised and excited to hear "It's a BOY!" When they laid him on me one of the first things I noticed was his long feet/toes! He was 21 1/2 inches long and weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces. Olivia also weighed 7 lbs. 7 oz.! This was another surprise to hear how big he was being 3 weeks early! Overjoyed!
We wanted Olivia to be the first visitor to see him. When she came in she wasn't too sure of her surroundings let alone this strange baby in her mommy's arms. She didn't want to touch him or get near him. Getting a picture of our family of 4 was quite an ordeal. Listening to her whining and crying out in the hallway when she was leaving with Grandpa and Grandma Beck was hard, too. On Thursday when Terry went and got her and brought her up for another visit she was much more at ease. Olivia saw Carter's toes sticking out of the blanket and said "beef"! She wanted to do This Little Piggy with him. Once we got home on Friday we found that it will be a bit of an adjustment for her and will take some time. She doesn't like it when he's crying or mommy's feeding him. She has gone over to his crib and said bed because she wants me to put him down. She does like to bring him things and thinks he needs his paci all the time. We enjoy watching her use Carter's "things" to change her stuffed animals "oooey" diapers. At naptime we have heard her saying "Mommy, Daddy, Olivia, Carter...bruda (brother)...Olivia's bruda...WAAAA!"
Carter's bili ruben counts were border line when we left the hospital on Friday so we had to go back in on Saturday and have them rechecked. Again, they were just border line but we were to just monitor any yellowing at home.
Carter is a good baby. He doesn't mind his noisy sister or any sound while he's sleeping. He sleeps a lot. We are already noticing so many differences between babies!
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