Tara Allison Matheson was born on January 30, 2007 at 12:06 P.M. by C-section, to proud parents Coleen and Allen Matheson, and big brother Tyler Matheson; weight 5 lbs 10 oz, length 18".
Coleen was scheduled for a C-section on February 16th (her actual due date was March 1st), but her water broke on the morning of Friday January 26th. Since she was about 5 weeks early, the doctor admitted her to Woman's Hospital and put her on bed rest. The doctors monitored her over the weekend; the following Monday morning they told her that they wanted to schedule a C-section for Wednesday January 31st.
At 8am Tuesday morning (January 30th), Coleen suddenly started having some strong contractions. On call that morning was Dr. Smith, who coincidentally had delivered our first baby (Tyler) in 2003. Dr. Smith told her that this may or may not be the day, and just to wait a little while and see what happened. By 10am, Coleen's contractions had become extremely strong to the point where she was in a lot of pain; when Dr. Smith examined her she discovered that she was fully dilated and ready to deliver!
Tyler was delivered by C-section, so we were planning to deliver this baby by C-section as well. However, since she was already fully dilated, the baby was very close to coming out and Dr. Smith asked Coleen if she wanted to try to deliver naturally. She tried for awhile, but ran into the same problem that happened when trying to deliver Tyler naturally: the baby's head was tilted backwards and twisted sideways. She was lodged against a pelvic bone and wouldn't budge.
Dr. Smith decided to do a C-section at that point. When baby Tara was finally delivered just after noon, she looked like she'd been in a boxing match. Her head had been in a position that caused a lot of bruising and swelling on one side. We compared Tyler's first pictures with Tara's - they both had identical swelling and bruises from the delivery.
Since she was a little early, Tara had a difficult time breathing at first, but they got her jump-started fairly quickly and admitted her to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Level 2. She stayed there for just over 2 days, and was released to the general nursery.
Just about that time, Tara's big brother Tyler and her grandparents (Allen's mom and dad) came to the hospital for a visit. All 3 had been staying at Coleen and Allen's house while they were in the hospital. That night, Tyler got very sick and threw up several times. Of course, we were very worried since he had been hugging and kissing his new baby sister just a few hours earlier.
The next day, Allen's mom got sick and Allen's dad came by the hospital to bring a few things and visit. That night, his dad got very sick and had to be taken to the emergency room at the Clear Lake hospital. Of course, by this time we were very worried that Tara or one of us might catch this. Thankfully, all 3 of us remained healthy throughout the whole ordeal.
We were released the next day and decided to play it safe, and checked in a hotel in Clear Lake for a couple of days instead of going straight home. We finally went home on Monday, February 5th. Allen's mom scrubbed down the house (several times!) to make sure it was virus-free for our homecoming.
However, a day after Allen got home, he caught the same virus and became very ill. No way was he going to miss out on the same fun everyone else already had :-) The good news is Coleen and Tara remained healthy, and everyone else has since recovered. We'd like to thank mom and dad for all their hard work taking care of us during this rough time!