Happy Birthday at the Hosital!!

Carson Earl arrived into this world on July 10, 2006 weighing in at 8 lbs 12 oz, stretching out to 21 1/2 inches at 5:41 pm. His journey began at 10:20 am when my water broke while I was waiting in line at the doctor's office! He already had great timing! They plunked me into a wheelchair and we headed right up to Labor and Delivery.

Jeremy and my mom arrived within minutes as the first nurse checked me in. They inserted an IV and began monitoring Carson's heartrate and my contractions. Somehow I managed to skip the first phase of labor and went right into active labor. My contractions got very intense, very quickly, sometimes coming two in a row-back to back!! My goal was a 4 hour labor and after just two hours the doctor ordered my epidural.

I was dilated to 3 centimeters at the start of the epidural procedure. The anethesiologist had difficulty inserting the needle, apparently my vertebre were very tight. 30 minutes or so later, when she finally finished-- keep in mind I was having painful contractions throughout the entire procedure-- I was dilated to 8 centimeters.

The nurse called my doctor in (Our doctor who had seen us throughout the entire pregnancy just happened to be on call that very day! More great timing!) and we did a practice push. Fortunately, unfortunately the epidural was so strong that I couldn't feel where to push. They called the anethesiologist back in to turn down the medication. We then had to wait 2 hours for it to wear off. In the meantime, all the family members arrived and kept us company!
When it was time to begin pushing, family headed to the waiting room! Jeremy and I worked as a team for 45 minutes pushing and counting as Carson made his way out. He was sideways and his cord was wrapped around his body so it was a lot of work to get him out! We watched the event in the mirror! It was absolutely amazing to see him arrive! His conehead was off to one side and he had injested merconium so the NICU was on staff to pump him out. It took a little while for him to cry so it was wonderful when we finally heard it!

All of the doctors and nurses were shocked to see such a big baby come out of me! We were all surprised!