baby!

samantha jo was born on wednesday, november 26th, at 1:02 am!

she was 6 lbs, 12 oz, 19.5 inches long.  she's very healthy, had apgars of 7 and 9, and was incredibly awake and alert after the birth.  she's eating like a champ - actually the breastfeeding thing has gone a lot more easily than i expected so far.  not easy exactly, and certainly not painless, but it works.

the labor and birth were very difficult.  i went into labor around 6 pm on monday night, the 24th, after an exam where the midwife said there were no signs i'd go soon :-).  the contractions started out way closer together than the books say, although not unbearably painful.  so i wasn't able to rest or labor at home as much as we wanted because we didn't know how far along i was.  we did go back home for a while after we went in the first time, though.  anyway i ended up stalling out at 6 centimenters for hours.   we decided to go ahead and break my water to see if that would step up the frequency of the contractions, which had spaced out.  it didn't make them much closer together, but it did make my already very strong contractions even stronger.  awesome. 

rebecca had been talking me through them very well, helping me breathe instead of just yelling.  also whenever i'd get another update of "you're still at 6!" i would pretty much freak out, so she had to talk me down from that too.  after a few of those stronger contractions, though, i had had enough.  it felt like i was being torn apart.

i made it until 6pm on tuesday without medication, but i hadn't slept since sunday night, hadn't eaten since 5 am, and nothing we were doing with different positions, etc seemed to be helping.  when they told me that the stronger contractions probably weren't doing anything more to dilate me, since they were still so far apart, i couldn't do it anymore.  so i had an epidural and a low dose of pitocin to help the contractions along - the baby was tolerating everything beautifully - and pretty quickly made it to pushing.  pushing seemed to be going well - i thought it was going well - but then the midwife noticed that the baby's head was sideways and was not turning.  usually the head has already turned to the anterior by the time it descends that far, and sometimes it stays posterior and that's ok too - but when there is no other way (like a funny shaped pelvis) the baby turns her head sideways and gets stuck.  this might be why it spaced out so much, too - she was tring to turn and couldn't.

the midwife brought the ob in to confirm and he tried to turn her a few times but no luck.  so we basically had no choice but to go for the c-section.  my parents, who i had put on labor alert around 11pm monday, had left jax at 11 am tuesday, arrived at the hospital in dc around 11pm just in time for this news.  last they had heard, i was pushing.  so, silver lining, at least they were there for the birth.

the surgery was... unpleasant.  it took a while to get totally numb, and i was feeling nauseous, exhausted, and disappointed that after all our preparation and resolve to do this naturally, i had ended up with the epidural, pitocin, and a section.  when rebecca finaly was allowed in, they got started and for all their reassurances that getting the baby out only takes a few minutes, it took a while.  apparently she was really, really stuck.  they were practically standing on my chest wrenching her out.  my blood pressure crashed and so the moment my daughter entered the world, i felt absolutely horrible.  i had the shakes so bad, and i was drowsy, and my sternum hurt.  rebecca says i was really scaring her because i was so out of it.  but i cried with joy anyway.

Comments

[Larry Croix]

Beautiful baby and beautiful parents.

[sara]

Laboring, even if you end up with a section is good for the baby. Sorry you went through all of that, but it sounds like you did amazingly!

Your little girl is precious.!!