Hi From Syracuse: Grandchildren #7 and #8 arrived!!

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Grandchildren #7 and #8 arrived!!

WELCOME TO THE WORLD--

CARTER ANN HALL

4 LBS. 12 OZ 18 INCHES LONG

7:09 A.M.

AND

ALEX RAE HALL

5 LBS. 2 OZ. 18.5 INCHES LONG

7:12 A.M.

Arriving on September 30, joining 4 other Hall family members with September birthdays.

Alex and Carter

For us, the story goes like this:

At 7:45 am on Sunday, September 30 (Florida time) as I was getting up and getting ready for Church, I got this text from Jessica--"Hey, So eventful night...Jena threw up a few times during the night-not sure food poisoning or sick. And then we think my water broke so now we are on the way to get checked out. Chantel is at the house with everyone."

When we got out of Sacrament Meeting, we had the above cute photo on our phone and our first look at our new granddaughters--Carter and Alex. Alex had to be on O2 for a few hours but neither had to go into the NICU. They were born at 36 weeks.

The full story goes something like this:
Jessica had worked on Saturday from 6 am to 3 and then they had packed up the boys and all of their laundry to do in our larger, more convenient washing machine. Jena had spent some of the day at a friend's house and came home after they all arrived.

They settled down to bed in the evening except for Elessia who is a night owl. She happened to come upstairs about 1:00 in the morning to get some cold water and Jena was standing in the hallway getting new clean sheets. She had gotten sick in her bed and was trying to get things cleaned up. Elessia helped her out a bit and Jena was sick off and on for the next few hours. About 3:00 in the morning, Elessia headed back downstairs to go to bed. About an hour later, Liam had a bad dream and that woke up Zander--Jessica and Elessia. Liam went back to sleep quickly, but Zander wanted to stay up. Since Jessica had to leave for work soon, she stayed up with Zander to allow Elessia to get a quick nap. Jessica called into work and told them that she was going to be about an hour late since it was around 5:00 and she was still trying to get Zander back to sleep.

That turned out to be a little miracle because at 5:15 am after getting Zander down, Jessica's water broke. If she had not delayed to give Elessia time to sleep, she would have been on the freeway heading to work in Salt Lake when her water broke. So they decided to call Scott and Chantel to come stay at the house, and then headed down to the hospital. It was 5:45 am when they started off and texted us.

Jessica was scheduled for a c-section due to the positions of the babies which had been mostly transverse the entire pregnancy. Jessica and Elessia said that the nurses seemed to be going so slow when they arrived at the hospital although they understood that they were just trying to do all of the proper things in an orderly way. When they finally did an internal check, Jessica was dilated to a 6 and they felt Carter's foot. That changed the whole pace of things--suddenly everyone was in fast motion and they weren't even sure that they would have time to do the epidural before performing an emergency c-section (the other option was putting her totally out.) However, it worked fine and the babies were born at 7:09 and 7:12--after some serious pulling to get them both out.

We felt so lucky. First, although it was not an easy pregnancy, Jessica was able to work up until the day before they were born. That is amazing. And then everything worked out for their safe delivery.

Of course, there is the whole thing about that they (the twins)were told many times that September was a busy month of birthdays so they should shoot for October and they were supposed to wait until we got back from our trip!! Jessica commented that she was glad that we were already on our trip so we could enjoy it. She thought it would have be harder if the girls had already been born to leave. Maybe she is right...and maybe Carter and Alex had that all planned as well.

So our back-up plans for everyone went into effect--Scott and Chantel, Ben, Chris and Jen (my nephew) and Adam (another nephew) all pitched in to take care of Liam, Zander and Jena and the dogs and the house. We appreciated all of their help when we were so far away. Thank heavens for Facetime and texts to keep us updated while we were far away having fun. Not how I planned it--but I think we know how plans happen in life!!!

To make life easier--Carter has blond hair and Alex has dark hair, at least for now.