Braden Cai Carroll has arrived!

Braden Cai arrived at 12:02pm on Saturday, April 18th, 2009. He weighed in at 7 lbs, 6.4 oz and was 20" head to toe.

THE STORY (may be too graphic for some readers - although, I've tried to tone it down):
We went to the hospital and checked in at 9:30pm on Friday, April 17th. After checking in, they put me on monitors, put in an IV port, and drew blood for labs. After being monitored for about 30 minutes, they called the doc to let her know what was going on. She had the nurses go ahead and start me on Cytotek to get things going a little better. After seeing that contractions had gotten going, they gave me a couple of Ambien so I could hopefully get some rest.

Evidently I did get some rest that night. However, by 3:30am, I was up again. At 3:48am, as I recall, my water broke. There was meconium in the fluid so the nurses called the doctor again. Since the meconium was very dilute the weren't too concerned. However, just to be safe, they started an amnio infusion to help further dilute the meconium. The also went ahead and started my epidural and a Pitocin drip. (At this point, I'm still only dialated to 1cm.)

Here is where time went out the window for me... I'm having contractions about every minute now - even though I'm not feeling them. The nurses have now seen the baby "decel" twice. (This means that the baby's heart rate is decelerating to an unfavorable pace.) They call the doc. She comes in and checks me. I'm still only at 1.5 cm... She tells us that if the baby decels again that it will be 3 strikes and a trip to the OR. Within the next hour, the baby's heart rate again goes below 50 beats per minute. The OR is scheduled and we're put on-call.

The OR is finally available and we're prepped. Right before they wheel me out of the room they pump me up with an extra dose in my epidural. (At this point I still have some sensation and movement in my lower extremities.) Mom is sent to the waiting room and Daniel is sent to put on scrubs.

Once in the OR, they tie my legs down and prep my abdomen. They poke me up and down with a sharp plastic object to make sure I'm numb. Then, my doc pinches me - evidently rather hard - to make sure I really can't feel anything. I can't feel a thing, so it's all good. They bring Daniel in. He's walking in as they start to slice into my abdomen.

As they're slicing into me, I try to focus on Daniel. He looks so worried... I can only see sheets and smell buring flesh. He can see over the sheets to see what's going on. After just a few minutes of cutting and terrible odors, the doctor's assistant puts what seems like all of his weight on my upper abdomen to help push the baby out. There's a lot of pressure, then a popping sensation as Braden is pulled from my abdomen. The doctor cuts the umbilical cord, which was wrapped around Braden's neck three times, and passes Braden off to the pediatrician so he can be assessed and so she can finish with me.

Braden passes his first test with an Apgar score of 8/10. Five minutes later they test him again and he passes with a 9/10. They said it would have been a 10/10, but he wasn't crying. A nurse brings him over and takes a picture of the three of us! I then get to hold him for a minute before they take Daniel and Braden away so they can finish putting me back together.

The doc tells me that it was a good thing we scheduled to come in when we did, because we would have ended up coming in and delivering today anyway. Evidently the sore spot that I had on my upper left abdomen was where Braden's placenta had begun to deteriorate. They cleaned out my uterus and started stitching it up. About this time, a nurse came over and said she was going to give me something to make me stop shaking - I had been shaking throughout the Cesarean due to medications. This is the last I remember until waking up in recovery.

Next, post-op experiences.