Introducing... Micah Gabriel Carter

This past Wednesday, God blessed our family with our newest addition, Micah Gabriel Carter. He was born on 3/2/11 (pretty awesome birthday, huh?) @ 9:37pm. He weighed in at 7 lbs. 9 oz. & was 19.5" in length. He is such an easy-going, content, sweet baby boy. His little days are full of sleeping, nursing, cuddling, looking around for a few minutes, pooping, then sleeping again; this little cycle happens about every 2.5-3 hrs. :-)

His first doctor appointment was yesterday morning (5 days old) and he's already weighing in at 7 lbs. 8.5oz! That's quite impressive considering that the goal is to be back to birth weight by 2 weeks of age & he's almost there at 5 days; I'm proud of my good little eater.

Wondering how Wednesday went? Here's the story...

I woke up at 4:30am with contractions every 10 minutes lasting about 1 minute each for about an hour. I called the hospital at 5:30am & spoke to a triage nurse in Labor & Delivery. She told me to come on in. My next call was to my sister, Annie, who stayed with Jada while we were in the hospital. She packed up right away & hopped onto I-5. I then called my good friend, Kathleen (THANK YOU again, Kathleen!) to come over to watch Jada for us while my sister drove up from Eugene. I'm SO thankful for awesome friends and sisters who don't mind sacrificing their sleep/plans to help us out in the wee morning hours.

Gabe & I quickly finished packing our hospital bags & took off. It was much different driving to the hospital in clear weather instead of the crazy snow storm that we drove through when Jada was born. I was starting to get worried because the contractions started to slow down. When I checked in, I was 4cm dilated (I was 3cm just a few days previous at my last prenatal appt.) & my contractions were becoming further apart & less painful. The nurse monitored the contractions and Micah's heart rate. The contractions weren't too impressive, so she asked me to walk around the hall for an hour then we would see if I made any progress.

We spent the next 50 minutes or so walking the Labor & Delivery loop about 20 times. My legs were cramping up and that lovely round ligament pain kicked in, but I was stubborn & really wanted to see some progress, so we kept walking. After the hour, I was still at 4cm, so she told me that I had to go home and wait for the contractions to become more intense again. By then, my sister was arriving in Beaverton & taking over for Kathleen. I really didn't want to go home because I was afraid that I would either start having contractions again and have to rush to the hospital and not have time for an epidural (can you tell I love epidurals?) or I would come back to the hospital once they were more intense then just get sent home again. Anyway, the nurse hooked me back up to the monitors and told me that they would just watch my contractions & his heart rate for a few more minutes before I went back home. After a couple minutes, my contractions picked up just a little & Micah's heart rate dipped a little... not enough to be too worried, but low enough to require more monitoring. Yay - thanks, Micah! The nurse came back into the room and said, "You just won yourself an induction". Whoo hoo! It was time to have a baby!

My doctor wasn't able to take care of me that day, but Dr. Wentross was the on-call doctor and she's wonderful. She broke my water at about 12:30pm to help get things going. When I was in labor with Jada, my contractions became A LOT stronger once my water was broken. This time it did help, but honestly, my contractions just felt like really bad cramps... nothing terribly impressive. At 3pm, we decided to start a small dose of Oxytocin to see if it would jumpstart my body into labor-mode. I was starting to develop a headache by then because I hadn't really eaten anything since my grilled chicken salad 22 hours before that (it wasn't holding me over very well). Dr. Wentross told me that I could order something really lite from the menu to help give me some energy. I ordered 2 potato rolls & a banana. I seriously felt like a new person after those few calories & was ready to get the party started. The oxytocin drip started at 4:15pm at 2 (not sure exactly what that breaks down to, but I know that it said "2" on the machine). We increased the dose to "4" and that's when things started picking up.

At 4:30pm, Gabe was getting pretty hungry, so I told him that he could go downstairs and grab a burger but to please just eat it down there, so that I wouldn't smell the deliciousness in our room. :-) I was feeling good enough to be okay on my own for a little while, at that point. When he was downstairs, my nurse told me that I could order some Jell-O, which sounded amazing, so I ordered that for my "dinner". At 5pm, the contractions were reaching the point to where I was clenching my fists & crying with each one, so I texted Gabe between contractions "Contractions are getting stronger - might get epidural soon. Oh, & I ordered Jell-O :-)". He walked in the door about 30 seconds after I sent it. The next 15 minutes or so were filled with painful contractions that were quickly becoming more intense. I went ahead & asked for my epidural thinking that it would be another 45-60 min. before the anesthesiologist would show up (that's how long it took with Jada), but I was pleasantly surprised when he arrived in about 15 min. After the epidural kicked in, I felt SO much better. Initially, it was pretty numbing, but then it tapered off to the point where I could move my legs around & could still feel the contractions, but they just felt like bad cramps; the edge was taken off. Hooray for epidurals!

Because of my challenging labor & delivery with Jada (pushed for 3 hrs. & 13 min.), I decided to wait until I felt like I absolutely HAD to push (spontaneous pushing instead of coached pushing) before even attempting this time. Even though I was at 10cm at about 8:45pm, I waited until 9:20 (that's when I actually wanted to start pushing) to start. I pushed one time at 9:25, at which point the nurse told me to stop pushing because she needed to grab the doctor.

A few seconds later, Jessica (my nurse), walked back into the room with a woman who introduced herself as Helen (an awesome certified nurse midwife). She said, "Hi, I'm Helen. Dr. Stewart's delivering another baby down the hall (by then, the on-call doctor had changed), so I'm filling in. I'm so happy to be a part of this with you. I'll just be over here washing my hands. Just push when your body tells you to push & don't push if it doesn't. I'm ready to catch your baby whenever it happens". She was so sweet. I pushed once & she asked if I wanted to touch his head, so I did. I expected him to be barely crowning, but then I realized that his entire head was out. I started crying out of joy & pushed again & I watched her just guide his shoulders out. She then looked at Gabe & said "Can you grab him for me? Just grab him right here and pull." Gabe helped deliver Micah & it was just so perfect.

What a blessing to witness such a miracle!


Jada is adjusting very well to being an older sister. She loves helping Mommy take care of baby Micah. Here's a cute little video of her helping. :-)



Here are some precious pictures of Micah's first 6 days of life...









Gabe is on paternity leave right now and we're just enjoying spending time as a family. We're loving the visitors that are stopping by to meet our new little man and are planning a couple of fun outings too. We had lunch today at Out of This World Pizza (a fun indoor playground in Hillsboro that serves pizza & ice cream) and are planning on going to the Children's Museum on Thursday.

We are so blessed. I just couldn't be happier.