Carter is finally here!

So I know I am way behind with the blog. It has gotten a little crazy with a new baby, 3 other children and Christmas. So I am just getting around to writing about Carter now. But hey, better late than never :)
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He is finally here!! Carter Alejandro Lopez joined our family on Monday, November 4^th at 1:10 p.m. He weighed 7 lbs 6 oz and 19.5 inches tall. He is beautiful! It was quite the adventure to get him here, though. The night before he was born, I drove the kids to where they would be staying while we were in the hospital, because I was being induced the next day. Alie went to Kyla’s, Braxton and McKailey went to Aleah's.  Once kids were taken care of, we went to bed. Neither Alex nor I slept very well, I was still having lots of contractions, just not consistent enough to go to the hospital. (I should also mention that that's how it was for the 3 weeks before he was born- lots of contractions but not enough to go to hospital.) We woke up at 4:45 a.m. to get ready and went into hospital at 5:30 a.m.  To put a long story short, it took the nurses till 7 am to get my IV in and not hurting me (they left lots of bruises but my veins were really small and didn't want to work. They said I was dehydrated which was weird because I had drank lots the day before and then I was there so early in the morning. But anyways, Doctor Oliver came in at 8:30 and broke my water. 10 minutes later I asked for the epidural because I figured why go through lots of pain when I was going to get it anyways. Plus I was getting far along, a 5 or 6, so soon I wouldn't be able to receive the epidural. The epidural guy was amazing. He did it quick (in between contractions) and it worked great. I would have to say that it was the best epidural I have had. The nurses had to keep coming in because Carter would keep going off of the monitor. But it wasn't bad, we were just hanging out.

--> Around 11am they had to give me some Pitocin because the contractions were stopping again. Then at 12:30 the Doctor came in to check on me and found out that his head was turned. So she tried to turn his head which Carter didn't like because he didn't corporate at all.  Then Dr. Oliver explained that he was trying to come out eyes, nose, mouth first.  She explained that most people get a c-section when the baby tries to do that. Well, if you know me, you also know that I am completely terrified of an operation, so I told her I would like to try to deliver him. She told me that he would come out bruised, but the swelling would go down. And so that is how he was delivered, face first at 1:10 pm. He was really bruised, but within a couple of hours a lot of the swelling had begun to disappear.

Carter's brother and sisters came to see him around 5:30pm (we had to get settled down and Carter received his first bath while waiting for them so he was all clean). They were beyond excited to see him. They took turns holding him and Carter gave them his presents to them so they opened them while waiting to hold him.

He had lots of visitors while at the hospital.