Samantha Day 3

Amy and I have been extremely busy learning how to feed and care for our new little one. We are still at the hospital and hope to leave Tuesday. Saturday night we tried and failed to catch up on sleep - getting maybe 5 hours. Sunday night we got more sleep - six whole hours in bits and pieces! Learning how to breast feed takes a lot of work and time for both of us. We are make slow progress getting Samatha to feed, but things are looking very good now. Samatha is a little jaundice, but it is nothing to worry about. Larissa, Lindsay, Edgar, Betsy, Jess, and Katie visited on Sunday. Monday Randy, Ami, Brian, and Christine visited and brought us food. Thanks.

This afternoon Amy had her epidural removed. She is feeling much better. It looks like we will be going home Tuesday, but our doctors have not said anything for sure yet.

To be clear, Amy did end up having a C-section at 6am Saturday. I watched most of the first half of the surgery over the curtain. It was strange to watch people cutting and pulling on Amy. The doctors were amazingly rough on Amy and Samantha. The OB pulled Samantha out by the head with what looked like a lot of force. Babies are much tougher than they look. The nurse then cleaned Samatha up and she was throwing Samantha around too. I thought that Samantha was beautiful and fell in love immediately. I missed the second half of the surgery (the placenta and sewing parts) to watch Samantha be weighed and measured.

Samantha Marie Cassady

Samantha Marie Cassady was born at 7:01 am. She weighed 7lbs 6 ozs and was 20" long.

Still in labor

Amy is still in labor. She is dialated to almost 10cm. We are in birthing room 13. Amy is doing very well with the epidural. We are just waiting for Amy to be fully dialated and to feel like she has to push. The excited part is just around the corner!! I can't wait to meet baby girl.

At the Hospital!!

Amy and I are now checked in to the hospital. Amy started having contractions at 1am this morning (Sept. 26). She let me sleep (mostly) until 4am at which time I took a shower and started packing the car. We had an appointment at the hospital at 9:30 to pre-register for an induction starting Sunday evening. The contractions were not coming often enough to go directly to labor and delivery so we attempted to make our pre-registration appointment. We made it to admitting on time and contractions were coming every 7 minutes as we filled out that paperwork. Then we went to the labor and delivery pre-registration desk - there were no nurses. We waited for 15 minutes before the first nurse to appear and we asked to be admited directly to labor and delivery. The nurse (Gayle) checked us in. Unfortunately, after 2 hours they said that we had to go home. The hospital is packed because 3 other hospitals in the area are still closed because of Ike. On the way out we completed our pre-registration paperwork because we knew that we would be back soon.

We were at home from 1:30 to 4:30. During that time the contractions got stronger and more frequent. We called the doctor and said that were ready to go to the hospital. We are now admitted and Amy is dialeted to 5cm and has her epidural. Her water broke around 6:45pm. We are now waiting to get a better room and for Amy to dialate to 10cm.