Avery Hague Carter

We are proud to  announce the birth of our beautiful daughter, Avery Hague Carter. Born November 25^th, 2014, at 8:52 pm. She weighed in at 9 pounds 2 ounces and was 21 inches long.

The arrival and first two weeks of Avery’s life were anything but what we anticipated. It simply illustrates how we are on the Lord’s timeline, not our own.

In an attempt to not include every tiny detail of the experience, I will try to give the reader’s digest version of Avery’s story. We’ll see if that actually happens because I hate to leave out anything about our sweet girl’s life.

The last few appointments of my pregnancy I was progressing in all ways except having contractions. We were nervous my mom wouldn’t arrive in time having planned for her to be there five days before my due date. Avery had her own plans. Two days after my due date we had a sonogram to check the fluid. Things looked good and the tech said she was about 8 lbs 11 oz but the doctor reassured us she usually overestimates.

Six days after my due date we had a scheduled induction. We settled into our L&D room at about 9 am and soon started a low dose of Pitocin. To pass the time we watched the replay of the BYU basketball game from the night before. Later in the day we watched another BYU basketball game live, I know - we’re hardcore. By then I was having stronger contractions since the doctor broke my water at 1:17 pm. From there I started having a lot more pain and eventually decided to go ahead and get an epidural. It went smoothly, my contractions were coming regularly, and everything looked good. At 3:40 I couldn’t handle it anymore and got an epidural. I’ll leave out any of my own details on how much pain I was actually in. But thinking back on it, I can’t compare the pains of having a kidney stone and labor pain, for me they were completely different, but both extremely painful.

At 7 pm there was a shift change and my doctor went home and another from the practice came. Thankfully my nurse was doing an extra shift so she stayed on and was awesome. At 7:25 I started pushing and quickly became very exhausted. After about an hour of pushing, things quickly took a turn for the worse.

I was given some extra oxygen and after a little while the nurse noticed I had a fever. At the same time she noticed that Avery’s heart rate had suddenly skyrocketed. They called the doctor in and decided to quickly get the vacuum to get her out. She was not being able to get past my pubic bone. Thankfully I only had to push a few more times with the vacuum helping before Avery was born at 8:52 pm.

We instantly knew something was wrong. After she came out, a large amount of meconium followed her. My doctor realized right away that Avery had breathed some in so he did not stimulate her. She wasn’t making a noise. They took her away instantly and started working on her. I hadn’t heard my baby. I hadn’t seen my baby. As the nurses were waiting for the NICU team to arrive they began trying to remove as much meconium as they could.  It took approximately 4 minutes for the NICU doctors to arrive. They did CPR because her heart rate was so low and eventually got a good beat. Avery was without oxygen for approximately 6 minutes. (All through this process my focus was split between wondering what was going on, totally in shock with what was happening, and in total pain again from my doctor sewing up my degree 4 tear.)

Before they took her down to the NICU they brought her over so I could at least look at her. Someone had just asked me what her name was and I said I hadn’t even seen her yet. Then when I did see her I knew instantly her name was Avery. I mouthed it to Mitch since he was across the room and then they headed down to the NICU.

Avery had suffered from Meconium Aspiration Syndrome and was subsequently connected to a lot of machines in the NICU. She had a respirator helping her breathe. Her brain activity was being monitored by a constant EEG as a result of her oxygen deprivation. She was on a cooling blanket for the first 72 hours for a number of reasons. The cooling kept her calm and gave her brain a chance to recover without too much activity. It helped to control everything going on inside of her and they didn’t want her to be moving or making any noises yet. She was also given morphine to keep her calm and sedated so she wouldn’t accidently bump any of the things attached to her. She had a temperature probe going down her esophagus. An arterial line in her arm to help them draw blood and give medications. She had a line going through her navel to give her nutrients. And she was on oxygen and dopamine. I think that’s everything Avery initially had hooked up to her.

Eventually things started getting unhooked and we were excited she was making so much progress. Once the EEG came off her head it was so good to see her big head of hair! As they warmed her up and was able to regulate her own temperature, we finally heard her cry for the very first time at five days old. They were ready to start weaning her off of the respiration when Avery decided she’d had enough and pulled it out herself! They put in a CPAP to make sure she was breathing okay and after a short amount of time she proved herself and then only had an oxygen tube in her nose. It was so nice not to see that huge respirator tube going in her mouth.

Eight days after she was born they took out the line going through her navel and we were finally able to sit and hold our little girl!

From that point it was another week of waiting for her feedings to slowly increase and her lipid IV to decrease. At eleven days old she got an MRI of her head and things looked good. The next few days were particularly hard because we thought she would be able to come home, and then things were happening that didn’t allow her to come home. The only monitors she remained on were for her heart rate, lung rate, and oxygen saturation.

Avery was not being able to maintain her oxygen saturation at the level they wanted it. But it seemed to be dropping randomly. They couldn’t figure out why it was happening and she had no other symptoms so they weren’t doing anything for her. They could only monitor her. As a result of this they wanted her to do the car seat test. She had to sit in her car seat for an hour and a half. She failed the first time because her oxygen desaturated for a prolonged period of time. From there they told us they couldn’t do it again for another 48 hours, but they weren’t doing anything to figure out what was happening.

On Tuesday December 9^th we went to the hospital just for a visit. We had been told we couldn’t do the car seat test again until Wednesday. But her doctor that day, Dr. Eig whom we really liked the whole time, said he wanted to do the test again and get her home that day! Unfortunately Avery failed the test again. But we were able to purchase a car bed from the hospital so we could bring her home! It was a long process to go through discharge and everything else the nurse had to do for Avery before we took her. But we were so happy to go ahead and deal with it all since we wanted her home so badly.

It is scary having her home and not knowing for sure if her breathing and oxygen is taken care of. I know every new parent is concerned with their baby when they bring them home. I feel like we’re even more on edge because of Avery’s history, but that’s understandable. She has a number of follow up appointments in the next year or so including a pulmonologist, neurologist, audiologist, and early intervention occupational therapist.

Each day she was in the NICU seemed so long and like nothing was happening. But thinking back on it, Avery made huge improvements each day. We know it was through the help of prayers, the Lord blessing our family, her name being put on numerous temple prayer rolls thanks to family, and priesthood blessings given to her that she was able to make her miraculous recovery. We are thrilled to have Avery home and love being able to kiss her sweet cheeks!

We pray that our Heavenly Father will continue to bless us as Avery’s parents in keeping her safe and healthy. We also pray that Avery will continue to be so blessed with strength to fight through any difficulties that remain. We are so very grateful for all of the blessing we have already enjoyed this year and are humbled this holiday season to know how much our Savior and Father in Heaven love our little family.