Sanders' Salutation: Welcome Baby Carter

For the last week of November, I felt like the baby was coming soon, but really wanted to make it past the first weekend of December. Shawn's parents and sister's family came for a short weekend visit December 1 for a family Christmas party that was on the 3rd. I spent November 30 and December 1 cleaning the house and doing laundry. I guess it was really the only time I felt the "nesting" feeling going on. I was able to get all 3 bathrooms cleaned, the kitchen and the laundry done. Shawn helped me get the vacuum out and all the floors done. My friend Suzi came over and told me that she was here to help clean and she was so nice to do my kitchen floor and save my hips from the pain of doing that. It was so nice.

On Friday December 2 I took Shawn's Mom with me to do some shopping, and at one point I remember telling her to slow down or I'd go into labor. That evening when Shawn and I went to bed, I tipped over a cup of water and Shawn had to reach down between the wall and the night stand to clean it. I told him as we were falling asleep that I wouldn't wake him up unless I was in labor. I really meant it in a joking way, but at 3:30 I woke him up and told him I was having contractions and they were about 10 minutes apart. I'd been timing them for a half an hour. We got out of bed, called Labor and Delivery and they told me to drink 32 oz. of water, lay down and see if the contractions go away. I didn't drink that much water, and I am grateful I didn't. The contractions didn't go away, but intensified and became closer. As I packed my bag, (no I hadn't done that yet) Shawn went to the garage and started bringing in some of the baby totes. Our room went from orderly to a disaster zone in a matter of minutes.

We took this picture of my baby bump right before we left for the hospital. I think it's the only one I have of this pregnancy. I now wish I would have been more diligent to take more pictures.

We got to the hospital and my contractions were about 5 minutes apart with some only 2 minutes apart. I was dilated to 1, but was thinning. We got to the hospital around 5 am. The nurses called my Doctor and he said we would go to a c-section at 7:30am. At 6 the nurse came back in and adjusted my IV fluid to be a little quicker and told us that the doctor decided to go to c-section at 6:30. I remember thinking, "that's only 30 minutes away! I'm not ready for this." Things went really quick after that.

At 7:16 am Carter was born and had a healthy apgar score of 8. He was 3 weeks early. He weighed 7 lbs 9 oz. and was 19.5 inches long. He had lots of blonde hair and everyone kept commenting on how much hair he had.