Samantha's Birth Story

Mainly for my records...here is the story of Samantha's birth.  We all do things differently...

Monday morning at  6:30am Jason and I arrived at the hospital.  The staff seemed very busy.  We were told to make ourselves comfortable in the room while we waited...things were a little hectic at the moment outside our door.  I changed clothes and Jason got the TV working.  We waited for a little while until a nurse came to see us.

The good news was that I started the morning dialated to 3 cm.  That was pretty exciting for me because I had not ever progressed on my own that much.  The bad news is that I had a nurse who graduated from med school in May...and it was OBVIOUS to me that she was new.  I'll spare you the details, but she had me in tears more than once.

The nurse started the pitocin around 8:00am.  I progressed to a 4, but stayed there for a while.  The doctor checked things out and informed me he was going to break my water.  It took him about 5 minutes before he was finally able to break my water.  Apparently, my baby was safe and snug in there.

By 10:00am I was already looking for an epidural.  I was very nervous about it this time since things were a little difficult with Austin.  The anesthesiologist (however you spell it) was awesome.  He did everything so smoothly.  I was SO THANKFUL that this went so well.  I was feeling much better after this.  I could move my right leg rather well and feel contractions some on the right side.  My left leg was "dead to the world".  I could not move it for the life of me.  I was actually very happy with this.  I could feel enough to know what was going on....but I wasn't miserable.

The doctor assisted me to 5 cm...and then I stayed there for several more hours.  They had turned my pitocin way down because I was having TONS of contractions close together.  There was a good quantity of contractions, but poor quality.  I even told them that I wasn't feeling them like before.  They had to replace my belly monitor with an internal monitor to see what the contractions were really doing.  They soon discovered that they weren't doing enough and turned the pitocin up a little bit every 30 minutes or so.

Doc returned and assisted me from 5 cm to 8 cm.  I was very encouraged at this point.  After 8 cm...I quickly progressed from 8 cm to 10cm on my own.  When the doc checked me again, I was told that I was fully dialted but the baby was still very high and we needed to wait for her to come down.  We told the grandparents to take the kids to dinner since it would be a while before they could meet her anyway.

I sat up in bed to let gravity do it's thang...and literally about 3 minutes later I told them I was ready to push.  They called the doc in and 3 pushes later she was here!  We were just stunned at how fast it all came about!  AMAZING! 

A huge anwer to prayer involved her umbilical cord.  The other two kids had such short cords that Jason was not allowed to cut them.  There just wasn't any slack and it was too dangerous for him to do it...plus they were both seen by a NICU team.  So...here comes miss Samantha.  The cord was wrapped around her neck two times and the doctor easily untangled her.  This sucker was 3 feet long!  It was the longest my doctor had seen in years.  We just laughed with joy at the goodness of God and the wonderful answer to prayer.  Jason got to cut the cord twice!

For the first time, no NICU team, I got to hold my little baby right away!  It was precious!  The grandparents had just pulled into the parking lot to eat when we texted them that she was here!  The whole process was less than 10 minutes. 

We are so thankful for the prayer that has covered this pregnancy and birth.  Praise God for this little life.  It was a slow day...with a Super Strong Finish! ;)

Goopy and all!