Baby's here!

Phew! What a whirlwind couple of days! I went in to the hospital on Friday for my weekly non-stress test. Jeff had spent the night at his brother's cabin (out of cell phone range), but came back early just in case anything of interest happened at the appointment. In the 45 minutes we monitored his heart rate, he had four decelerations, which were enough for him to fail. Suddenly, January 29th became baby day!

Although I knew it was a possibility, I was a little shocked that it was actually happening, and was a bit emotional as I was admitted and made the necessary phone calls. My mom, who had driven home on Wednesday, immediately jumped in the shower and prepared to make the drive back. I was alone for a few hours as I tried to find someone to watch the kids (there was really no rush for Jeff to get to the hospital, since we knew it was going to be several hours before anything happened), so I got to really think about what was going to happen. And request the epidural before the nurse even started the ptocin. The timeline for the day went like this:

10:00 am-failed non-stress test
10:30-admitted, dilated to 1.5
12:00 pm-epidural and pit started
2:15-dilated to 3, 60% effaced (Jeff got there about 1:00, missing out on the multiple attempts to start my IV and the epidural. Good timing, since he isn't a big fan of watching needles pierce skin).
3:30-met Dr. Weibell, my doctor's partner who was on call, who broke my water. Dilated to 5, 80% effaced, 0 station. We started to worry that my mom, who was still 2 hours away, wasn't going to make it
4:15-dilated to 8, 90% effaced, started me on oxygen as baby wasn't tolerating contractions very well. I was feeling very little and happy as could be. The oxygen stabilized baby's heart rate quickly, no concerns.
5:00-started pushing. Mom still 22 miles away. Baby posterior, not making much progress. I could feel the contractions by this point, but they were not super painful. We learned quickly that I probably wasn't going to be able to push him out on my own, without a little help from the "vacuum." But baby's heart was fine, I was fine, so we decided to wait for my mom before getting the vacuum, just pushing with each contraction with little to no success.
5:25-mom finally arrives, doc pulls out vacuum
5:32-baby boy makes his way into the world with a gigantic cone head! 7 lbs, 1 oz, 19.5 inches long, apgar scores of 8, 9.


My first thought is that I am so glad for modern medicine. Not only the ptocin to stimulate labor, the epidural to make it bearable, the vacuum to help speed things along, but also the ultrasounds and heartrate monitors to begin with, that let us know that our boy was headed for trouble. We were able to get out in front of it and he really didn't scare us at all with his cord compression. We were able to get him here safely and quickly (almost too quickly!), and everything went amazingly well.

We named him Carter Edward Trapnell. Carter was the name Jeff and I agreed on, as one of the few we both really liked. Edward is after Jeff's dad, Frederick Edward, as well as Jeff's grandpa and great-grandpa. It has nothing to do with a certain vampire. But a fun coincidence...

I'm sure there will be plenty more in the days to come, as well as lots more pictures once I figure out how to get them off of my mom's camera, but here are some to start.

Damon's waited a long time for a brother!

Kyla making us laugh in the hospital with Grandma's glasses

Going home on Sunday


Staring intently at grandma today. He definitely wanted to wait for her, and she couldn't be happier about that!