Karter Scott Nunley - a Birth Story and a Story of True Love {part 1}

Saturday, October 19th, 2013 at 10:21am our lives were forever changed. Karter Scott Nunley was born, and so were Scott and I as parents. I never knew a heart could swell so much, so much that it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about that moment.

Friday night, the 18th, Scott and I had just gone to Cafe Rio, got our food to go - it's our Friday tradition. I had my normal debate... Fideo or Burrito... Fideo or Burrito, I mean its a big decision, Fideo Friday is only once a week... I went with the Burrito as I was pretty darn hungry and that would fill me up more than a Fideo. We got our food and headed to Maverik to get a redbox... I had found a Romance/Drama I wanted to see... it was kind of slim-pickings at the redbox, so this was one of our hit or miss choices. We got to Maverik and they were out, bummer, not much else to choose from. So we looked up another redbox, found it close to our house and headed that way. We pulled up to Holiday Oil the same time as another car - I told Scott "Hurry, you need to beat that guy, what if he rents our movie??" the guy beat us, and totally rented our movie. I watched Scott hesitate a little, then rent a movie. He got back in the car and said "that guy was totally going to rent our movie, but I talked him out of it, I told him he doesn't want to spend a miserable night watching that movie" haha, I was shocked, way to go Scott. I totally believed him, until he told me he was kidding and there were two copies of our movie... that Scott, always keeping me on my toes :)

We got home, sat down on the couch, started eating dinner and watching our movie. The burrito was definitely the right choice. We were only probably 20mins into a movie that really wasn't catching either of our interest (the risk you take with no name movies in redbox i guess) when I said I was going to go to the bathroom. I sat there for a second and though "ugg, we don't have toilet paper in our bathroom down here... how bad do i really have to go?" so I sat there for a few more seconds and i heard this little pop in my upper right abdomen. I looked at Scott, asked him if he heard that, he hadn't, i just said.. that was weird, I wonder if our little guy just did a massive flip? then it hit me MY WATER JUST BROKE. 



I could feel it starting to trickle down my leg, so i RAN to the bathroom, which still had no toilet paper. I sat down and started yelling to Scott "I am pretty sure my water just broke... I just keep peeing, but its not pee!!!" he said nothing, so i yelled for him to come to the bathroom, his response was "I don't want to see whats going on in there" (fair enough) but I really just needed someone to freak out with me!! Then it hit me.. I started shaking... like uncontrollably shaking, I have never had adrenaline and nerves hit me so hard and so fast! i looked at Scott as i ran upstairs and he was shaking just as bad! I got upstairs threw a few extra things in my bag like my toothbrush and toothpaste and put them in my bag. I changed out of my pajama pants and threw on a pair of shorts. Scott met me in our closet where we both were freaking out. I stopped us both and just looked at Scott and said "hug me... our life is about to change and I'm really nervous" we held each other for a few minutes, both of us shaking. We said a prayer together and finished packing our stuff. Scott looked at me and asked if horrible chest pains were part of this experience, I laughed and said this is no time for a heart attack. We grabbed the rest of our clothes, and the water just kept coming. I was back sitting on the toilet and it just kept running and running. so I thought I would just put one of those huge over night super absorbent no leak pads on... yeah, that should do the trick. the water kind of stopped a little bit, so I thought we were in the clear. We grabbed all of our stuff and left. We remembered the car seat, but we literally just threw it in the backseat, figuring we would secure it later :) We backed out of the driveway, Scott stopped and said "which way do you want to take the hospital?" In his defense, I am a complete weirdo about this certain route by our house... I hate driving it and I don't know why. So I told Scott this whole pregnancy to go this other way when I go into labor... which he did ever so nicely that night (I swear it's faster then the other route).We were driving down 12600 and the water started leaking gushing again. It basically just laughed at my super duper absorbent never leak pad as it filled it right up and started leaking all over my pillow (yes, i sit on a pillow) it was so weird.. it just kept coming! We called my parents on the way to the hospital, they had landed in Tucson about 6 hours earlier to go to the Utah vs Arizona game, needless to say, they were rearranging their flight and headed home first thing in the morning. I also called Emily, who was in Vernal visiting her in laws, she was totally asleep, so I called her Sister in Law, who woke her up. I let her know my water had broke, she said she would head home first thing in the morning. We pulled into the hospital, found the closest spot we could, parked and waddled on in. I can swear to you that i left a trail of water all the way to labor and delivery. We headed towards the elevator, stopped to get one last "pregnant" picture and headed up the elevator.

I think we were both so nervous, there were no clear thought processes. We got out of the elevator and i squeaked in my flip flops like a kid that just got out of the pool all the way to Labor & Delivery. Got to the doors, picked up the phone and told them my water had broke. They opened the doors and we squeaked down the hall, still leaving a trail (where was all this water stored at??) I got up to the desk, told them my water broke, they asked if I had pants proof... lol I turned around, sure enough, the whole butt of my shorts was soaked. They put me in room Labor05, I changed out of my sopping wet clothes and into a gown, is this really happening? Hopped into bed and a cute tech came in and started my IV. She was good, only one stick and drew my blood from it, I totally appreciated that!

I asked the tech to make sure I had a super nice nurse... I mean no one wants a mean nurse... We learned that Dr. Rich was the anesthesia on call, I had hoped it would be my friend Dr. Steve Johnson, but like everyone else, he was out of town for UEA weekend. We also learned that since Dr. England was out of town (which i knew ahead of time, and i was totally devastated :( ) that Dr. Matthews was on call for OB. I had talked to him on the phone a few times and he was super super nice. Turns out I worked with his Dad Morris Matthews at Cottonwood, his Dad is an awesome anesthesiologist and a super nice guy. I was satisfied with him being the on call doctor and went with it.
Our nurse came into our room, her name was Ashley, she was super cute, kind of quiet, but i could tell she would be the perfect nurse for me :) She tested to make sure my water truly was broke and I didn't just massively pee my pants, sure enough it was positive. She then asked me all of their questions... the whole drill. I was starting to feel contractions at this point, nothing too painful, just like really bad cramps. She checked me, I was "about a 2+", which is always open to interpretation..

 Dr. England said I was a 3 in the office, but either way. I was about 80% effaced, so we were well on our way. It was about 11pm by this time, we tried to settle down and watch TV... it was going to be a long night. Scott got "comfortable" on his couch bed and I tried to relax. The contractions started picking up in intensity, like cramps that were really bad all through the front and back. I figured why torture myself? I have nothing to prove, I puked almost everyday with this sweet baby, I wasn't about to try to have him without an epidural. So we called the nurse and let them know I was ready for my epidural. Thinking back, I don't remember being nervous to actually get my epidural, but thinking back even further, the whole time I was pregnant, it was a little bit of a stress point. getting the epidural was cake. it hardly hurt. I would say no more than a blood draw. The anesthesiologist was great, he even thanked me for not waking him up at 3am to get my epidural, everyone was winning right now. Dr. Rich dosed my epidural for me and we waited for it to take effect, which didn't take long... at first it was weird, just tingly, then my legs started to get really heavy and the epidural was moving up into my lower chest cavity (which its supposed to). I tried to remain calm, I mean, I wanted to have this baby without having a total panic attack, so far I was doing good. Then the epidural started to kick in a little bit higher, it was kinda getting hard to breath. I called Ashley in, she explained that it was totally normal, but she could see that i was totally hating life. I asked her if there was anything I could take to calm me down (i swear I am not a druggie, but hey, if medicine is available, I am all about it - that's what it is there for!!!) unfortunately there wasn't anything I could have that wouldn't affect the baby, so I was on my own. I was hating life. I hated this epidural, I hated how it made me feel, it was almost a claustrophobic feeling, but more of a helpless feeling. I tried to calm myself down, Ashley was so sweet, I knew she felt so bad for me, wishing she could do something to help me. She turned the TV onto this calming music (it was video of a fish tank) to try to help, which it did a little bit. I finally had Scott grab my iPod, I plugged that in, turned it to one of my favorite playlists (my Sunday mix) and tried to relax. Listening to the sweet music of the gospel actually helped quite a bit. There was so many silent prayers said that night, all of it seemed to calm me. I let the epidural run down quite a bit before I re-dosed it again, which led to having feeling in my feet, almost up to my knees, and having feeling in my chest, but no pain. I had found the perfect median. I tried to sleep, which was pretty unsuccessful. I would fall asleep for like a half hour, then my blood pressure cuff would go off and scare me to death. we played the sleep - blood pressure cuff - getting checked game all night long.  I maybe slept an hour. Scott tossed and turned all night long, he was so tired and anxious as well. 
By about 6am, Ashley came in to check me (I was at 4 at the previous check) and i was already to a 9! I was shocked.. and a little bit proud, I managed to go all the way through labor without any pitocin, my body did it all on it's own!! :) I was a 9! I woke Scott up (like he was asleep anyway) Ashley said we could start lightly pushing to see if I could push to a 10. We pushed a few times and a 10 I was. 

Our baby was tolerating contractions really well, his heart rate was totally consistent the whole time, so we decided I could rest a little before we start pushing, pushing. 

It was almost 7am, I knew Ashley's shift was ending and there was no way I would deliver before she left. I was so sad, I wanted to keep her the rest of the day. I also learned that Dr. Matthews was going off call, but said if I delivered before 9, he would stay. I had arranged with Dr. England that if he was gone, I wanted his partner Dr. Porter to deliver, so that was my back up plan after Dr. Matthews left. Turns out that Dr. Porter was out of town as well. Grr, dang UEA Weekend. We ended up with Dr. Monte Merrell as our backup.
7am came and Ashley left us with Amy (I think it was Amy.. we had a lot of A names while we stayed) who took such good care of us as well. She came in and suggested that we start pushing, which was fine by me. We pushed for probably 45mins, when Dr. Merrell came in, he wanted to see how things were going and how much progress I was making. He did a little feeling around (awkward?) and found our that our baby was looking up (they should be looking down), so he turned him around - oh my goodness!! that hurt so bad, even with an epidural! I looked at Dr. Merrell and said "I sure hope my baby's head isn't as big as your hand, he kind of abruptly replied "oh it will be much bigger, if its smaller, we have a real problem" Umm, okay, that wasn't a very nice response, but okay.. as he was leaving, he said, "if you don't deliver within an hour, we will have look at plan B"  ummm is Plan B a c-section? I dont want that! He said that since I rested and descended I am a higher risk for hemorrhaging, so we needed to deliver soon. What? I had no idea that if i rested that I would be risking a c-section or hemorrhaging. I totally would've pushed the whole time.. oh well. Now I had serious motivation to push this baby out! We started pushing again, and our nurse noticed there was meconium... oh great, that wasn't there before, now our sweet baby was totally at risk of aspirating poop, nice. We kept pushing, which wasn't as bad as i thought it would be. I could feel the pressure of the contractions, but no pain.
Next thing I know, we have two respiratory therapists a nursery nurse and Dr. Merrell in the room. We are going to have this baby any minute! I thought i would be more stressed knowing this was about to go down, but i wasn't, it just happened. Scott was so sweet, he held one of my numb legs and motivated me the whole time. He was seriously the best support I could've asked for. I was so glad he was able to watch our son be born, I was pushing so hard that my eyes were closed. 

They had me push a few more times, but this time there was so much pressure, so much! no pain, but the pressure felt like my bones were bending. I then became one of those Mom's whole started yelling.. well, not totally yelling, but Owww, OWWWW, OWWW came out a lot at a decent volume. Then he was born and so were we. 
Next thing I know, they placed this adorable and slimy baby on my chest. I remember just seeing the longest legs and arms. He was just scrawny and long! Dr. Merrell cut the cord and handed him off quickly to respiratory. He didn't cry much, I watched his sats from afar, they looked okay, but why wasn't he crying?? 

Scott was going back and forth, got some cute pictures and video. Our poor little guy had the worst cone head ever. They ended up using a vacuum to help get him out, so his head just looked so sore and awful. He checked out fine at 5lbs 15oz and 19 1/2 inches long and as we would later learn, he didn't cry much because he is totally his Dad's son, just calm and cool as ever. He was Perfect!

(Don't mind my swollen man hands.. lol)