Carter Edward Marshall was born on 4/3/15 at 3:51pm weighing in 5lbs, 9oz. This is the story of his arrival.
Laura and I had planned on taking a few hours off on Friday afternoon to go look at a new car for the family without an impatient toddler begging us to leave at every turn. This turned out to be one of the best decisions we have ever made. Laura woke up early on the 3rd with a few contractions, but they didn't seem too severe and weren't very regular. We thought they were the Braxton-Hicks contractions, so Laura just went on to work for a half day.
She got home from work around 1:15 and said that the contractions got really strong on the drive home and started getting very frequent, very quickly. She called into her doctor and they said to go ahead and come to the hospital. Luckily I was working from home so we threw some things in the car, made her two PBJ sandwiches that she ate between screams, and went to the hospital around 1:45. I apologize to everyone I cutoff and everyone I tailgated in order to get to the hospital, but it was obvious from the frequency and the volume of Laura's screams that something was going down. I certainly didn't want to give birth on the side of 485, so Laura pushed through.
We showed up at the hospital around 2:15 and they wheeled her into the room. They got her hooked up to IV's, monitors, and checked her dilation. She was at 4cm and then around 15 minutes later it was up to 6. They called for the anesthesiologist and started on her epidural. It took him a few minutes to get it going, but it never really took. During all of this the nurses were paying attention to the monitors with serious faces while we were waiting on the OB. The OB showed up a few minutes later and checked her and Laura was fully dilated. He took a look at the monitors and decided that we needed to have the baby now. They broke her water and gave her a few minutes to see if Carter was going to come. Within 2 minutes of the water being broke, we were headed to the operating room to have a c-section.
I had to get dressed to go in, but I was told a few minutes later that I wouldn't get to come in. Carter had to be taken out very quickly and they need to take care of him without me having to watch. Laura also had to be put fully under as the epidural never had a chance to get fixed. After hearing about how it went, I am glad that I was not there.
The nurses came to grab me around 4 o'clock and told me that my wife and my son were both doing ok. Carter (unnamed at that point) needed to go into the Special Care Nursery, but I could come see him on the walk from the operating room to the nursery.
Have you ever seen such a cute, sad little face?
Carter had released meconium in the womb that was causing him distress and triggered the early arrival. He had a tough time getting going coming out of the womb, but luckily the doctor had made the decision to get him out as quickly as he did and Carter was in the right place to be helped.
Carter would end up spending the next few days until Monday morning under the care of the Special Care nurses. I got to go see him around 9pm that night while Laura was still recovering from her surgery.
Talk about tough...He had to have some help breathing to make sure his lungs opened up and antibiotics to get all of the meconium out of his system.
He was able to get off of the oxygen early on Saturday morning and we were able to get a good luck at him.
I didn't get to hold him until the next morning on Saturday.
Laura was able to make it out of bed on Saturday afternoon to go meet him for the first time.
Carter was in the Special Care Nursery until Monday morning, so several times a day I would hold Laura's hand as she shuffled down to the Nursery, scrub in, and get to hold Carter for his feedings. We tried to let him rest as much as possible, but he struggled to get going on his eating. Eventually he started to get the hang of it and came to our room Monday afternoon and we were able to head home on Tuesday.
Finally at peace with mommy.
