Carter's Birth Day

This is my Labor and Delivery story (as I can remember it)!

Thursday, March 4th began like any normal day. I woke up around 5am, showered, dressed, and headed into work. I was scheduled to work until my due date (another week and a half away) but since the beginning of the week I would leave my classroom as if I was never coming back. I stayed at work until around 4:00 and then drove over to a fundraiser my school was having at a nearby Chickfila. After a quick snack I made it back home and took a little nap. My mom and sister came over for dinner and we all watched The Office together! If you didn't see- it was the episode where Jim and Pam have their baby!

I spent the show rolling on my exercise ball because as of my doctor's appointment on Monday, Carter was still really high. I figured anything I could do to help move him down a bit couldn't hurt! Around 10:15 we all walked down the stairs so my mom and Alex could go back home. After two steps I felt a little gush of fluid and with each step down more and more kept coming. Thank goodness I was already wearing a pad and because I wasn't certain it was actually my water breaking, I walked my family to the door and said goodnight! After about 20 minutes I had already soaked through 5 pads so I called Linc, my midwife, and the family to let them know what had happened. The midwife recommended I try to get some sleep and if I wasn't already at the hospital by 6am to come on in.

Around 12:30am my contractions started up and after another call to my midwife we were on our way to the hospital! We were checked in and hooked up to monitors by 1am and everything was looking good. I was planning on going natural as long as possible and asking for the epidural before things got too intense. When they first checked me I was still only 2cm dilated so my mom and I walked laps in the hallway for about 45 minutes to try and speed things up. Unfortunately, all it managed to do was make me incredibly sick and I had to get back into bed. I got a shot of Demerol for the pain around 3am which unfortunately did nothing! The rest of the morning was a bit of a blur but I do remember my contractions just kept coming, stronger and stronger, and became so intense that finally I screamed out that it was time for the epidural!! A few minutes later I was begging and near tears only to find out IT WAS TOO LATE!! Somehow between 3am and 5am I went from 2cm to 9cm and was practically ready to push. The nurses called the on-call doctor and things happened pretty quickly after that.

I managed to breathe through a few more contractions before screaming that I had to push. It was not physically possible for me to stop and thank goodness I was finally at 10cm. I started pushing at 5:50am. Every 2-3 minutes I would push for 3, ten second increments. It was a huge relief from having to breathe through the contractions, but it was a feeling I could not even begin to describe unless you had experienced it! Pushing got harder and harder because I was getting so tired, but around 6:30 we had made a lot of progress and Carter's little head was crowning. A few more pushes later and out he popped!! The only time I opened my eyes was to watch his little body pop out. It was a surreal and amazing experience and after seeing how big he was I could not believe I had survived without an epidural! I ended up with a second degree tear, but the doctor said that was being generous and it only required a few stitches. My amazing, handsome, and supportive husband cut the cord and Carter Lewis Hamilton officially entered the world at 6:50am on the dot!

Meeting my son for the first time!

This is my "He weighed how much?!
And I didn't have an epidural?!" face

Getting checked out by the nurses.
He scored an 8-9 on his Apgar test!
Stats: 8 pounds 9.6 ounces, 20.5 inches long

Our sweet boy!

Getting his little footprints taken

Baby's First Swaddle

Well hello there little man!
Meeting each other for the second time!

Baby's First Bath!

Enjoying the best breakfast of my life while C gets cleaned up!

More to come...our first few days in the hospital!