Since I have shared Keaton’s birth story and Coen’s entire adoption story, I figured I better catch up new readers on Carter’s birth story as well. A mom has got to be fair, right?
Originally posted here: http://therobertshouse.blogspot.com/2008/12/carters-story.html
Let’s see, where did we leave off? Ah yes, I was completely stressed out that Carter would be delivered by a search and rescue team. As the “Arctic Blast” continue the very next day, we received a call from our doctor letting us know that she now thought it would be safest to get to the hospital while we could and induce labor. Since all the weathermen said that it was going to snow the entire week, we agreed with her.
We quickly grabbed our overnight bag, asked the neighbors to take care of Mona and then, ever so slowly, drove to the hospital with chains on the truck. When we arrived, they were ready for us, and got us set up in our birthing room. We had to do a few hours of monitoring to make sure that I would be able to handle the medications and that Carter was doing well. Once complete, I started taking medication and the contractions started right away. They were completely painless until 6am the following morning when we actually started the pitocin to produce stronger contractions. By 8am my doctor had arrived and broke my water. There was no turning back now!
In an attempt to make a very long story short, labor/contractions lasted until 2am before I finally reached 10 centimeters and was ready to push (apparently, the pitocin worked completed diffrerently on me than the doctor or nurse had ever seen – they had to turn it off completely every hour or so and then restart it to make more progress). As we neared what we thought was the finish line, we realized that the baby seemed to be facing the wrong way. So, after every contraction, the doctor would attempt to flip him around which was more painful than anything I’ve experienced in my LIFE! After an hour of pushing and no luck getting the baby to flip, we had to try a C-Section.
In the hour or so it took them get the operating room ready and get me there, the baby made it PAINFULLY clear he was ready to come. Chris got to come with me and he sat next to me on the same side of the curtain as they moved quickly to deliver the baby. I kept waiting for them to bring him around the curtain like they do on TV, but he didn’t come. I then realized I had not heard that big baby cry that you always here on TV. Chris tried to calm me by telling me he had heard the baby make noise. At some point, they told Chris he could go see the baby.
After an eternity he came back and reported 8 lbs, 1 oz. I felt like something was wrong – why wasn’t I getting to see him? Chris told me that he was fine now, but he had be stuck in the umbilical cord and had to go to the “nursery” for observation. He brought the baby over for me to see and then left with the baby to go straight to the ICU.
Scary, scary stuff! I got wheeled back to my room where different family members came in to check on me. Some already had gone to Chris and were able to see the baby. They told me that it sounded like he was fine and Chris’ aunt even gave me a camera from Chris with numerous pictures of the baby on it. Other relatives had no clue what had happened except that he want to the ICU which was not a good sign. I assured them that Chris said everything was OK.
The most amazing nurse arranged for me to be wheeled to the nursery to be with Chris and see for myself that the baby was OK. He was, and he was absolutely beautiful!
So, what happened? The baby WAS facing the wrong way and likely would not have been able to come via normal delivery. He also had managed to get wrapped in the cord more times than my doctor had ever seen and had already made it pretty far down during our hour of pushing. So, by the time they got to him, he was blue in color and not breathing. They quickly resuscitated him and emptied the extra fluid from his lungs.
Talk about a miracle. They ran all sorts of tests, but had him back in our hospital room within a couple of hours. He has been perfectly healthy and lively since. He is a our true Christmas miracle, keeping us awake all hours – and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
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