Delivery Day

So we were supposed to go to the doctor for our weekly check-up on Thursday, but Baby Carter decided he couldn't wait any longer.

**If this is too much information for you please skip ahead to the next post**

My water broke Wednesday night at 9:30pm and contractions started up at 10:30pm. After watching the end of Top Chief and taking a shower we headed to the hospital at midnight. We were very excited to hear I already dilated 3cm. At this point we thought by 8am - 10am we would have our baby!

At 4:00am the contractions were still 5 minutes apart and not very strong. They started medication to speed up the process.

At 8:00am the doctor said I was STILL 3cm and my contractions were STILL 5 minutes apart. Eight hours of labor and nothing was progressing! At that point it was time for the epidural. Below is the lovely picture my husband took to document my contractions. He literally took the picture in the middle of the contraction!

After the epidural the rest of the labor was a lot of sleeping and watching the NCAA basketball tournament. I dilated rather quickly from that point (almost 2-3 cm per hour). Next thing we know the Purdue game is on and the nurse said it's time to push. After 20 hours of labor Baby Carter was born at 5:24pm.

Welcom Carter Evan Meek

Hello everyone,
Great News!! Carter Evan Meek is here! He was born Thursday, March 20th at 5:24pm. Carter weighed in at 7 lbs. 6 oz. and was 20.7 inches long. We were released from the hospital this evening and we are so excited to have the little guy home. We promise to update soon with pictures and more details about the birth; but for now Mom, Dad and Carter are trying to catch up on some much needed sleep.

Thank you to everyone for you lovely emails, phone calls and hospital visits. We are so lucky to have such amazing friends and family!

40 Weeks + 1 Day

Sorry no news yet. Hopefully the doctor will have some encouraging words tomorrow. If you voted the baby would come late....YOU WIN!

Still Waiting

We are still waiting for the arrival of our little bundle of joy and it really seems like we've been waiting FOREVER. We had a doctor's appointment on Thursday and again there is nothing to report. I still haven't had any contractions and I still haven't dilated at all. Our due date is THIS Tuesday (Mar 18th) and our next appointment is Thursday (Mar 20th). At that appointment they will do a non-stress test to make sure the baby is ok. A non-stress test is basically hooking me up to a fetal monitor...nothing painful or scary. The doctor actually said she expects to see me at my Thursday appointment. That's NOT the encouraging words you want to hear at this point. She also set up a date to have the baby induced....just in case it doesn't want to come out on it's own. We would check into the hospital on Monday (March 24th) at night to start the inducing process and the baby would then be born Tuesday (March 25th). It is nice to know at the longest we'll 9 days left to wait!

Physically I'm feeling ok. I've started to have a lot of knee pain and groin pain lately. Simple walking and getting up and down from a seated position has become very unpleasant. I've started sleeping on the couch too. It feels better on my back and it's easier to get out of the couch then the bed. That really makes a difference when you're up several times a night to go to the bathroom!

Hopefully we will have some good news to share soon. I will try to update often now that our Internet is up and running again.

babies, babies everywhere

We are excited to know so many expecting parents right now. Baby Meek is going to have lots of friends around the same age! This is a picture of Becky and her mom posing with Fearrin's long-time family friends. Molly Applegate (McHugh) had a baby 3 weeks ago and Molly Voris is due in 10 weeks. We couldn't be more excited for these girls and all of our prego friends.

Nothing New

I had my weekly dr. appointment today and sadly there is nothing new to report.

• The baby's heartbeat was still strong at 150 and measured in at 37 weeks (although I'm 38.5 weeks pregnant).
• Somehow I've managed to lose another pound on the scale. I have no idea how that happened since I've eaten out almost every day this week AND ate 4 boxes of girl scout cookies. I assume all those calories will show up at next week's weigh in.
• The doctor said I haven't dilated at all. I'm not surprised since I haven't had any contractions yet, but hey, a girl can always hope.

If you voted that the baby would arrive late, I'm starting to agree with you. This baby has no desire to come out now. Maybe he/she is just holding out for Spring (which also doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon)!

Oh No Bo!

We were hoping Bo Kitty wouldn't notice the new crib in the house. And for the first couple of days he didn't. The other night I noticed Bo starting to play underneath it...not so bad. But he was board with that pretty quickly and decided jumping into the crib was much more fun. I would scold him and quickly take him out, but apparently that just added to the game. Every time I took him out, he would jump back in. This little game is going to come to an end real quick. Bo Kitty will NOT be sleeping with the baby. Thankfully Nina is too fat to jump that high so we don't have to worry about her.