Sam's Birth Story Part 2

Continuing the story... if you missed part one you can find it here. 
I left you all hanging that my nurse checked me and said I was 100% effaced and almost a 7.

(3:30-3:55) I was really surprised and thought "I'm almost there!" I felt some pressure um... down below.... and figured that the baby was just moving down and I still had a couple hours left. Right about then my doctor came in to check me even though the nurse had just done so a few minutes before. He said I was 6-7 cm dilated, 100% effaced and baby was at a 0 station (which means her head was engaged in my pelvis- moving on down). He asked if I had felt any pressure and I told him just a couple times and he asked if I was feeling a lot of contractions... which I actually wasn't. He took a look at the contraction sheet and said they were "on top of one another" and said things would move really quickly once I was past a 7, but still said "around dinner".

A few minutes after he left the room I started feeling pressure with every contraction. During this our friend, Holly, was asking for directions to the hospital and Tim handed me my phone because he "couldn't figure out how to text on it". (3:52pm) So during the breaks I got between contractions I managed to text her directions. First the pressure was bearable and I just breathed through it. After five or so minutes (and Tim getting increasingly anxious because I was death gripping the bed rails) I told him to call the nurse cause I really felt like pushing.

(3:55-4:13) The nurse came in very quickly and checked me and said I was ready to push... only I couldn't just yet because she had to get the bed adjusted (the end flips down or something) and my doc was paged. She moved really fast and and at one point told me to try "choo choo" breathing which I tried, but I don't think that lasted long. My nurse did make the comment that the doc better hurry up or she'd be delivering the baby and said, "it wouldn't be my first... or my last". Right then my doc came in, got positioned and my feet were put in the stirrups. I remembering thinking it was all happening so fast and hoping that I could push effectively. I started pushing and they had to remind me to hold my breath while I pushed (which I really had to concentrate on because I had just been breathing out with the contractions to NOT push). I pushed a few times (effective pushing!) and Sam crowned and with another big push her head was out. I heard my doc say something about the cord around her neck and I sort of just stopped and he told me I couldn't stop, that I needed to pull my legs to my chest and push as hard as I could cause we had to get her out. To me it felt like everyone else was in slow motion because my legs were numb and they had slipped in the stirrups and it seemed like Tim and the nurse were just standing looking at me. (They were great, but I just didn't give them a chance to help apparently.) I grabbed my legs and pulled them up (still don't know how I managed to do this on my own) and pushed like never before. I remember thinking this was the hardest I had ever pushed and that I couldn't do it anymore, but obviously I had to keep going.
 (4:13) With one more push she was out. She had the cord wrapped around her neck twice and tightly and then once around her leg. The doc got the cord unwrapped and got her to cry and then grabbed the cord and gave it a squeeze to get more blood into her (that was really weird and apparently looked gross, too). The nurse put Sam on my chest and kept rubbing her with a blanket to get her to cry more. I thought she looked really dark until I realized she was purple from the cord being so tight around her. 

 After a few minutes she was looking much better, although her hands and feet were very pale for quite a while. They gave us about 30 minutes or so with her until a nurse from the nursery came in to weigh and measure her. (Her apgars, if anyone cares, were 8/9.) I think this is the first time that someone from the nursery hasn't been there during delivery and I thought it was really nice to just have my nurse, my doctor and Tim with me.

Sam's first night was interesting. Apparently she was used to the noise of her siblings and so whenever our room was quite she would wake up and fuss. She mainly slept in our arms and with the noise of the TV and her daddy talking her to sleep. She is still great sleeping through the regular noise around the house and has gotten used to it being quiet at night (although we turn on the noise machine for a few minutes when we lay her down).

  6 days old

She is an amazing baby and we are all so in love with her.