well, it was finally here! all the months of anticipating what our surprise baby's arrival would be like were now materializing. exciting and scary.
mom stopped working the 3rd and took some time to get a few things done around the house, thinking she had another week and a half to get ready. but while our doctor originally thought he'd have to induce on the 16th, after checking me on the 5th he thought I could go into labor that weekend. after joking about my labor fears with some friends at lunch sunday (the 8th), early labor signs started that night. good guess on his part!
after feeling some strange discomfort sunday night, our wonderful doc was able to sneak us in on the morning of the 9th and detemine I was 2cm dilated. he was pretty confident i'd go into labor that night. after calling both of our parents (and telling my mom to "get on a plane NOW"!), i came home to rest and jeff went into work to finalize a few things. about 2:00p i started to feel contractions, and just before 5:00p we went for a long walk at balboa park. jeff was determined to meet this baby!
what ensued there could definitely have been used in one of those cheesy labor videos -- lots of breathing, leaning on jeff, etc. i'm just really glad we didn't see anyone we knew! jeff has one incriminating picture, but besides that i'm safe.
we came home and i took a long bath, but the contractions were slowing down, so we headed to target to walk some more. again, another experience i hope none of our friends witnessed. by the time we walked to twiggs, our local coffeeshop, contractions were about 5 mins apart and we made the very surreal trip to mary birch. the gigantic rice krispie treat i had at twiggs would be my last meal for awhile!
i really thought i wasn't far enough along, and that after being checked by the triage nurse, they'd send us home. to our great surprise, it turned out i was 8cm dilated and therefore admitted immediately! (and yes, i did feel like a superstar for making it to 8 with no meds!) it's about 1:00a on the 10th at this point.
after sitting in the bed for awhile, the contractions were much harder to handle, so i did opt for an epidural -- which might be the greatest of all modern miracles. the doctor on duty that night wanted to slow my labor down actually, so she could get two doses of antibiotics in before i delivered (i was group b strep positive), so it worked out well for all.
about 6:00a the doctor said she wanted to let me labor down for another hour or so, and at 7:00a i started pushing. baby sam's heartrate was pretty high, so the delivering doctor (new, as of shift change at 7:00 -- all kinds of people coming in and out!) was concerned about pushing too long. we were about 3 pushes shy of moving to c-section, but God heard our prayers and little sami was vaccuumed out at 8:11a!
i'm pretty sure i was more in shock about her being a girl, than believing i had just given birth to someone! upon hearing the words "...and it's a beautiful baby girl!" my heart swelled with the strongest of emotion and i just couldn't hold it in! that's not to say i hadn't been crying before then, but it was quite a moment -- and then they held her up, and it was all over. our baby girl. OUR baby girl. pretty amazing.
daddy went with sam to have all of her tests done, and both of us got to hold her a little bit later. gigi (my mom) was also in the room, and thankfully got everything on tape. she says it's a little shaky, though, from all her crying!
feel free to take a look at the first weeks of little samantha's life:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jeffandlindsay/BabySamFirstWeeks?authkey=Gv1sRgCPKmqNrz5cn70gE&feat=directlink
