Baby Carter joined our family on August 15th! It was a pretty crazy experience, but we are so happy and grateful that we are all healthy and doing well now! I'm so happy that Amanda was here to document everything in pictures. She did a fantastic job. She said she felt like a paparazzo. Haha!
Aunt Amanda talking to the baby. Even though she lives so far away, he totally knew and responded to her voice! It was so cute :-). I know they have a special bond already.
My doctor's office said that the hospital would call me the night before to tell me what time I was supposed to be at the hospital. Around 8 o'clock I decided to call them since I hadn't heard anything. Come to find out, they had no record of me being scheduled to come in the next day. After some stress, drama, and 2 hours later I was finally able to contact my doctor's office and have them rectify the mistake. The hospital said they would call me the next morning around 6am or later and let me know when they were ready for me. Needless to say, I did not sleep very well from about 5am on. I finally got up, got ready, and then went back to bed. I got about an hour more of sleep before they called at 8:30. We got to the hospital at 9:30am. I had a fantastic nurse! She recommended I get an epidural early and it was the best epidural and labor experience I have ever had! It completely restored my faith in epidurals and almost completely squashed my small desire to try an un-medicated delivery. My mind is a little fuzzy on the details of the next few hours. Basically, they started pitocin, I got an epidural, and then they broke my water. I went from about 4-5cm to complete in less than an hour. After 3 pushes or so, he was here!
Our last picture as a family of 4
I feel very blessed to have had my sister present for all 3 of the births of my babies! I'm hoping that for the next one she will not get lightheaded and finally feel strong enough to stand by me for the whole delivery. :-)
Carter Christopher Bleak
7 lb. 9 oz. 20 inches 2:58pm
Thursday, August 15, 2013
He immediately started sucking on his arm. It was so cute! he looked so chubby when he was born! We all were a little surprised that he only weighed 7 and a half pounds. He was born with so much hair compared to our other boys.
We got to hold, feed and cuddle him for about an hour and then Nathan took him down to the nursery for his first bath. After Nathan left things went downhill pretty fast. I started to hemorrhage. I was so grateful for an experienced nurse who shot into action. I got several drugs to help slow and/or stop my bleeding. Nothing seemed to be working. We had a bunch of nurses come in to help. They called Nathan back from the nursery, but because things were so unstable he couldn't bring Carter back with him. To sum things up, it was one of the scariest experiences of my life. I was lying helpless in the hospital bed feeling and hearing warm blood drain out of me. After several hours, the medications finally were able to slow my bleeding. When all was said and done I had lost about 2+ liters of blood. I wasn't allowed out of bed for the next 24 hours because I was so weak. I could barely handle sitting up for a few minutes at a time. The next day I got 2 units of blood which helped me regain some strength and feel a little bit better. Weeks later we discovered I had a large piece of placenta that had torn off and was stuck inside. It most likely caused the hemorrhage. Thankfully, a day and a half later I was feeling well enough to go home with my sweet little, healthy baby.
Super cute and excited big brothers!
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