Carlos Nicolas arrives on July 27th!

It's official - the baby beat House II!! Carlos Nicolas finally decided to join us! Though he seemed happy to stay put at 41 weeks we smoked him out with spicy food and threats of castor oil. He was very accommodating as Carlos didn't want him to come on Monday July 28th and I was worried about being induced on the 29th and we were both worried about driving to Sibley hospital at rush hour. So being the gentleman that he is he decided that 5am on sunday was a good time to make a trip to the hospital.



The gruesome details:
Contractions started at dinner (spicy thai!) and got regular around midnight. I tried to distract myself until 3:30am when I finally had to wake up Carlos to help me pump up the birthing ball. We timed the contractions (on excel :)) until 5am. The intense ones came every 5 minutes and then slightly shorter ones every couple of minutes. At 5am we finally picked up that hospital bag that I had packed a month before and headed out.

Of course the trip wasn't without Carlos and Genny moments...like the fact that we didn't exactly know how to get to the hospital so I had luckily packed a map and navigated between contractions. Then there was the "birthing ball" which when inflated didn't really fit into our two door car. Carlos decided it was a good idea to wedge it between my face and the windshield. "It'll keep you safe" he tried to tell me. Right...tell that to a woman having contractions 2 minutes apart! Neither of us thought to deflate the ball, but luckily it did end up wedged in the back.

Although the contractions were so regular and painful when we got to the hospital at 5:30am I was still only 3 cm dilated!! I almost fell over. No progress at all! So I put on a hospital gown and walked around the room and bounced on the ball for another hour and a half. I kept shaking all over every time I had a contraction which made relaxing and "focusing on breathing" really hard! Luckily at 7:30 I was 6 cm dilated. Of course by then I was bouncing in pain with the contractions and carlos was fast asleep on my hospital bed! I had to force him up when the nurse told me I needed to get back on the monitor. It gets kindof blurry but I know that they had to hook me back up to the fetal monitoring which constricts your movement and at that time my water broke. Unfortunately there was meconium which meant that little Carlos' bowels didn't want to wait anymore (which makes sense now as he is quite the prolific pooer!). By then I was 7.5 cm dilated and they were hurrying to get the doctor to the hospital. The nurse said that I would be pushing soon and so I focused on the big digital clock on the wall facing me, willing the minutes to pass.

The process wasn't really what I expected - there was only one nurse there and the doctor only made an appearance at the very end to set up the slip and slide plastic thing and unveil a table of instruments that I hoped she wasn't planning on using on me. The nurse stood on one side and instructed Carlos to "grab a leg!" I was shocked - as I am sure Carlos was too - I thought he was going to stay above my midsection and hold my HAND - NOT MY LEG!! I remember thinking even at the time how surreal the experience was. They told me to push for 3 sets of 10 during a contraction. It was much better when the nurse would do the counting as I would loose count and Carlos counted so slowly I thought I would die before he would get to 5! I would open my eyes between pushed and see the doctor standing back saying "oh, Sylvia (she calls me by my first name) - that was just great!" What does that mean even? I couldn't feel much happening so I thought she was being patronizing. But I guess his head was starting to come out and when the doctor told Carlos to look and see the head, Carlos responded somewhat horrified and somewhat disdainfully "That's his head?!" The doctor took time to explain that babies heads aren't fused together fully, blah,blah,blah - all while I am between contractions and wondering how we were having this conversation!

Pushing wasn't quite the relief that I anticipated as after every push I had extreme abdominal pressure and back pains. But then I could tell something was happening and pushed for dear life, despite what I could tell was maybe tearing. And then the doctor stood back and said "My, what a big baby!" and all 21.5 inches and 8lbs 2 oz slithered out. Carlos said that he starting crying with his foot still in the womb! Because of the meconium the neonatalogist had to look at him before I could hold him. They took him to the other side of the room and told Carlos that he could go see his son. Carlos was sitting with tears welling in his eyes and I could tell that he wasn't sure he would be able to stand up. But he did and the nurse brought him some juice. I have to say that Carlos did great for all his talk about not wanting to see the full process...

Even though I had heard a million labor stories it was still totally surreal & unexpected & amazing & crazy that after all that that we have a young carlos. He is so adorable and I can spend hours just watching him. It's amazing that even just breathing can provide endless amounts of entertainment...Unfortunately he isn't the best sleeper so I get lots of chances to watch him at night as he wakes up every hour!!

As for the house - well the good news is that we passed the last inspection which hopefully means that drywall can go up and the house will start looking more like a house. The insulation is up which was no easy feat and the stairs are on! The stairs replace a very unstable board that was used as a ramp into the house which always elicited horrified looks when a 9 month pregnant lady climbed up it.

I'm attaching some photos of young carlos, the picture I was about to post on sunday of 41 weeks, and some house photos. Everyone says he looks like carlos (though he has my wrinkled skinny fingers!) so we'll see if he becomes a Carlito or a Charlie....