Carly Ann is here!

Our little family has expanded with a beautiful baby girl! Carly Ann was born April 4th, at 7:17pm.
But to start at the beginning... Darci's water broke at a birthday dinner for me on Friday with all of her family, so she grabbed a piece of ice cream cake and out the door we went. Getting to the hospital, Darci was barely dilated to 2cm. We had an awesome nurse that helped get settled in for the night, and got Darci on some meds to help the dilation progress a little faster. By late morning Saturday, Darci was ready for an epidural, and was still only dilated to 4cm. Dr. Bennett said that things were looking good, and he would be back in a few hours. Around 2pm Darci's epidural ran out before it was scheduled to, by the time they got a new IV bag in and scanned, it was nearly 3pm, and they couldn't get back on top of the pain, so it was more or less worthless. About that time, Dr. Bennett, who I forgot to mention was the doctor to deliver Darci when she was born, came back in to give Darci the discouraging news that she had only progressed to 5cm dilated. He said that he would give her one more hour, and then he would be ordering a c-section. Our nurses were determined to help us avoid those ever so dreadful words; they said that they were very superstitious, and that if we filled out all the paperwork and got prepped for one, we wouldn't have to go in. When that hour was up, we were pretty sure that none of that had worked, and that no progress had happened. Dr. Bennett came in with his bowtie and blank demeanor, checked her, and as he was cleaning up and washing his hands he said, it looks like it is about time to push, Darci was dilated to 9cm! We were so excited, that for a few minutes Darci didn't seem to even notice the pain of the contractions that were stacked about 30 seconds apart. Then came the pushing, 2 1/2 hours of it.. Dr. Bennett came in about an hour and a half in, and said that she wasn't making much progress because Carly was sunny side up, and pretty stuck, but that if Darci wanted to push he would let her for another half hour and see how things were going. Well that half hour got stretched out to an hour with other patients he was checking in on, but Darci was ready for him after about 25 minutes, but stayed amazingly strong the whole time. When Dr. Bennett came back in he checked Darci again and said that Carly wasn't actually any closer to coming out like the nurses had thought, but that she had some pretty major swelling on the back of her head, and he thought that the best thing to do would be going in for the c-section. So off they wheeled Darci to the OR and made me get all done up in scrubs, and wait outside the OR door while they prepped her. The nurse came out after about 5 minutes, saying that they were having a hard time getting Darci numb, and that if they couldn't get it figured out after one more dose (2 more than what was calculated for her body), they would have to put her under. Apparently Darci wasn't willing to get knocked out and not get to see Carly the second she came out, so she told a little fib about not being able to feel the knife blade when they poked her. So the nurse came out and let me come hold Darci's hand, which she squeezed tighter than I thought she ever could, as Dr. Bennett pried Carly out. Now 22 hours of labor later, I am back to where I started getting ahead of myself introducing Carly Ann Poe. She came out 8 pounds 2 ounces, 20 inches long, with a full head of dark brown hair. The first day and a half of Carly's life was spent in the NICU so they could monitor her and the swelling on her head. This was excruciatingly hard for Darci, because she was bedridden for 8 hours, and had to rely on the pictures and the reports that I brought her every half hour. Once she was able to get out of bed, we went straight over so she could see her little angel, and we went in every two hours and fed Carly the breast milk and colostrum that Darci had been pumping. After a good once over on Monday morning by her pediatrician, she was able to come into an outpatient room with Darci and I while Darci was getting all healed up from the c-section. We spent one more day in the hospital making sure that both mom and baby were good to go, making for 4 full days in all.

Oh yeah, we are blaming all this excitement on Natalie, she told Darci that she had to have an exciting birth with Carly because both her and Kaycee had a pretty normal experience with no big water breakage, or anything like that..
Pictures!