Soren Carter made his grand debut 8 days late, on June 14th at 7:35pm! Here is the full story gory details and all...

Wednesday found me a week overdue and desperate to get this kid out. At about 8:30pm Isaac and I went for a walk, and I started having contractions. After one disappointing experience of false labor we didn’t get our hopes up that this was real. We rented a movie on the way home and watched that, all the while attempting to time the irregular contractions I was having. The contractions continued to get more and more painful, and got to about 2-3 minutes apart, but never seemed to be more than 40 seconds long. We still were skeptical that this was it, but nonetheless I was having a hard time dealing with how painful the contractions were. About 2am I started throwing up, which led me to believe that this was it! I wanted to head to the hospital because between the pain and the throwing up I wasn’t doing well. Isaac apparently still thought it was false labor and that we would promptly be coming home, but he was wise enough to keep this to himself.

We got to the hospital and learned that I was 3cm and about 50% effaced. With all the vomiting they wanted to keep me, and I wasn’t arguing. My contractions started to be primarily in my back and super painful, and I continued throwing up. At 4:00 when I was checked I was only 4cm and still about 50% effaced. I was in such excruciating pain in my back, and the vomiting was making it hard to cope, so I decided to get the epidural. I have to admit that it was wonderful, I was able to snooze a little and was feeling nothing. The next 8 hours were pretty uneventful, as the baby wasn’t descending enough to put the pressure necessary on my cervix to help it dilate more. The doctor thought the baby’s head was maybe too big to fit nicely down in my pelvis. I got stuck at 5.5cm until about 1:30pm. Late in the morning the epidural started to wear off and it was excruciating! They attempted some different meds and doses, but nothing was helping. Eventually they ended up redoing the whole thing. Not fun! Then at 2:00 the same thing happened with the second epidural. The anesthesiologist announced that I was just resistant to the epidural, and that they had to replace it yet again! I was hysterical with the pain, it was worse than anything I could have imagined. Isaac will probably never let me down the fact that as he was asking the anesthesiologist some very good questions when I shouted “stop talking and just do it!!”. I finally dilated fully to 10cm just in time for the third epidural to wear off, and was given some narcotics. I started pushing after being in labor for 20 hours, and was hoping I was almost done. But again that big head got in the way (my mom might argue this was karma, as I had a big ol' head too and had a hard time coming out)! I pushed for two hours, but he wasn’t going much of anywhere, as he couldn’t seem to fit past the pubic bone. I was completely exhausted, so we decided with the doctor to use the forceps to help the little guy along. They pulled him just past the pubic bone, and then I was able to push him the rest of the way out at 7:35pm after 23 hours of labor! I had no damage from the forceps, but Soren’s big noggin gave me a 3rd degree tear.

When Soren first came out he had a hard time starting to breathe, and gave us quite a scare (his initial Apgar score was a 1!) but with some suctioning and slapping the nurses were able to get him going. He weighed in at 8 lbs 13oz and was 21 inches long!

Isaac was an amazing support, the nurses couldn’t stop gushing about how they had never seen a dad stay so calm and helpful throughout the whole process! He even was allowed to stay when they placed the third epidural, and managed to not pass out, which is impressive for someone as needle-phobic as Isaac!

We are all working on catching up on some rest, and doing very well!