Nathan John Carruthers

Nate-ster the Great-ster was born on Monday, October 25th!

His birth was a planned c-section and I think I much prefer this for the rest of our kids/kid/never again... we'll see! Ha!

The surgery was Monday morning at 7:30am so John and I had to be there at 5:30am. Ugh! As you can imagine, I didn't *really* sleep the night before. We got to the hospital and checked into triage. It was really weird getting dressed, doing the paperwork, and all the pre-op stuff in a little triage room instead of a nice hospital room. John was nice enough to go "re-park the car" while I was waiting for the nurses. Oddly enough, when he got back, he smelled an awful lot like Jack in the Box! ;-)

After I was hooked up to IV's and pretty much ready to go, we all walked up to the recovery room I would be in. The anesthesiologist (wow, on a side note, I got that spelling right the first time - go me!) came in for the pre-op consult and I explained to him what happened with James' c-section and how worried I was about the numbing for this one. He, of course, assured me that this time it would be done right and not to worry about anything.

Next thing I knew, the nurses came and got me and we walked into the Operating Room. Weird!! I remember asking Sonja S. what her repeat c-section was like and she was dead on: the room is really bright, freezing cold, and you are very awake and very aware of what the "tools" sitting next to you are for! Dr. Nicolov and the nurses were there the whole time. They were laughing, making jokes, talking about what they did over the weekend... I was not thrilled. In my opinion, they should have been studying their c-section surgery books and somberly meditating on the task at hand... :)

The anesthesiologist came in and we started the numbing process. Wowzers, did it work well! I don't remember exactly what it was, what he did, how he made it happen, but the most important part was that it worked!

One of the things I was worried about most with the surgery was thinking about what I should be feeling based on the previous c-section. I am so happy to say that God was gracious and that didn't happen at all. I was totally numb and barely knew they had even started to cut! I kept on looking up at the anesthesiologist saying, "wow, this is awesome, thank you, you are great, etc...". I did get sick in the middle of it again, but he said it has something to do with my blood pressure dropping from the drugs and that he was totally used to it!

Nobody was expecting Nate to be as big as he was. I can't even explain how funny it was to watch the blue curtain moving as they were full-force trying to push Nate out. I guess they even had to use a vacuum of some sort to pull his head out! Nate gave them a good work out that morning!

Nathan John was officially born at 8:06am at a very healthy 9lbs, 7oz, 20 1/4" long. Big boy!






After the surgery, we went back to the recovery room and.... I don't even know ....did recovery things? Then around 10 or so, I was wheeled up into my main room and got to see all my amazing family and friends (and James!) that had been waiting. I'm sure they were there to see me, right!




James wasn't really aware of who this new guy was... maybe a new puppy?


Nate's first bath:




Nate was born pretty jaundice so they had to watch him pretty closely in the first few hours. We called him our "tall, dark, and handsome" son!



And of course, Dr. Nicolov. He pretty much rocks. Seriously!


This "birth experience" with Nate was really super great also. It was beyond bizarre walking into your own operating room fully alert, but the anesthesia worked SO well this time and recovery felt almost quicker than with James. I still loved being at the hospital for so long and having time to "chill" and not worry about home things. Everything I was worried about was a non-issue. Praise God for this little blessing!