This is a really personal blog post being that it is of my own little guy! I have been lagging on sharing his pictures and tomorrow he will be 3 months old so I figured it was time!
We couldn’t be more in love. Christian and I joke that we want to take Sam to Never Never Land and keep him tiny forever. He is just the cutest, sweetest little guy. Yes I know I am biased, but that’s the love of a mother. This kids gummy little smile lights up my day….. And he does it all day long! But enough gushing over him…. If you want to hear my daily gushing and see cute baby pics, follow my personal IG.
Our newborn session was a bit of a challenge, we attempted it 4 times at day 6, day 7 and day 9 and day 11. Sam wasn’t feeding really well and I was a hot mess, you can read about my birth story and recovery below if you wish to, by the time I felt ready to even think about taking photos, he didn’t want to sleep. Every. Single. Time…. The family photo below is a photoshopped version of two different photos, and I didn’t even realize until Christian pointed it out, but his eyes were not looking in the most ideal spot…… I was bummed, I just wanted one family photo with Sam when he was tiny. Of course a photographer can’t get photos of her own child. I was somewhat prepared for that after talking to multiple photographers who attempted to photograph their own newborn session.. The only picture I said I cared about, other than a family photo, was the one below of Sam on the giraffe. That was the centerpiece in his room and what I thought about my entire pregnancy. That shot took 2 separate tries and the second time he slept for maybe a few minutes, but we got it! All that being said, I should say my kid is a GREAT sleeper. We would let him go at least one 5 hour stretch up till the first 6-8 weeks and would go more if we didn’t wake him to eat. At 9 weeks he started consistently sleeping from 11:30pm-7/8am, so I can’t complain! He just didn’t want to cooperate when it came to photos.
Sam, You are my little buddy, my best friend and my greatest accomplishment. Thank you for coming into our lives!
A little behind of the scenes at some newborn safety. Then I photoshop the two images together and remove Christian! 
This was the only way to get a family photo! While testing light Sam slept, but of course when i jumped in he was awake.
Here is my birth story, a way for me to journal what happened that day, feel free to read, or don’t, or just skip to the photos below!
Labor for me lasted about a total of 17 hours from the start of first contraction to the moment he arrived.
I had been having contractions for a week but they were across my stomach. I woke up at 3am on July 9th (5 days after my due date) in excruciating pain and the contractions were a lot lower, like uterus lower. They were consistently 10 minutes apart and sleeping was pretty difficult. We called the doctors office as soon as they opened because I had my 41 week appointment scheduled and wasn’t sure if I should still go in. We went to our appointment. At noon and found out I was almost 4cm dilated, we even talked about possible induction the following days if nothing happened that night. My doctor, Dr. Cobb, asked what I wanted to do. He knew I hated hospitals so he asked if I wanted to go home and labor a little more or go to the hospital right then. We decided to go home and labor a little longer there so I was comfortable since they still weren’t 4 minutes apart for an hour, like the recommend time for heading to the hospital. So for about 3 hours they stayed at 10 minutes apart with the occasional 20 minutes between, or maybe I had fallen asleep and not noticed one here and there. Then we had 20 minutes of 4 minutes apart. I changed positions multiple times, we brought the workout ball upstairs to sit on, I tried sitting in a regular chair, I laid on the floor, in the bed…. I decided I couldn’t wait any longer, the pain was just unreal and it felt like there wasn’t any time to recover in between them. I needed help managing the pain. We decided to go to the hospital even though that hadn’t been going on for an hour, like they suggest. Good thing we did. Once I stood up to leave the contractions jumped to 2 minutes apart.
Driving there felt like it took forever. I told Christian it was like he was driving Miss Daisy and he needed to hurry up! He dropped my mom and myself off on the curb around 4:30pm, I had to sit multiple times before even getting to the elevator. Once I was all checked in and admitted, I wont get into the ridiculously rude charge nurse, or the nurse who was just a chatty Cathy while I was in the middle of contractions, or the one who was asking me about my dietary needs, when all I wanted was an epidural, I was checked and was 8cm! Thank God! I couldn’t have imagined being in all that pain and only at 4cm still. I got the epidural, they re checked me and I was at 9cm. The epidural worked quite fast, the relief was amazing. The contractions just felt like pressure and I was able to try and get some rest. I was freezing and shivering. Multiple blankets did not warm me up. As I was lying there, trying to relax a very weird and warm sensation began to happen. Never having given birth I had no idea what it was. I yelled, “I am either pooping or his head is coming out, someone get a nurse!” Christian ran to get a nurse and come to find out it was my sack of water, coming out whole and breaking on the table. Shortly after that things got really serious.
Sam dropped really fast. I was laying facing away from the monitors and didn’t see what was happening. Christian saw Sams monitor drop twice and asked the nurse if we should be concerned. She got on the phone and asked for an extra pair of hands and kicked everyone out saying, “I never everyone to leave except the father” Christian asked again if he should be concerned and her response was, “Sir, I need you to sit down and be quiet.” They put an oxygen mask on me. I didn’t exactly hear what was happening next, but Christian told me she got on the phone again, and called for our doctor. Christian heard “I don’t have time for questions, just get him here now!” I looked over at Christian who was sitting on the chair, shaking his head with a look of distress on his face, which worried me. Once my sack of water came out Sam dropped so fast it shocked him. The nurses converted the bed and I started to push, they didn’t want to wait for Dr. Cobb, they were trying to get him out as fast as possible. First of let me say, the pushing part is nothing like you see in the movies. The screaming takes place during the contractions, and maybe if you are pushing during natural childbirth, yikes I cannot even imagine, but I was told to bear down as hard as I could, hold my breath and not make any noise. With each contraction I pushed 3 times. I went through two contractions with the nurses before Dr. Cobb arrived and stepped in. I started to feel my contractions before they would register so the doctor and nurses would rely on me to tell them when I should start. I pushed through 6 more contractions with my doctor. Every time he would say, “just a little but more, just a little bit more” thinking I would soon here a baby scream at the end of pushing, I realized this was him just encouraging me. I never stopped between contractions. I breathed for a second and was ready to go again. I just wanted to this to finally be over! A total of 8 contractions, I was very lucky! I know that. At 7:23pm on July 9th, Sam was born, weighing 7lbs 14oz (although he felt like he was much bigger) and 20 inches long.
I think the actual amount of time I was pushing made up for the crap shoot I had during pregnancy. Recovery was another story as well! This kid decided to rip off a part of my body, that’s not supposed to be detached, making recovery not so fun! I wont really go into….. I will say, it took me about 6 weeks to feel normal and finally be able to care for my child. It wasn’t even post postpartum depression; although my anxiety was high for a while, it was just one bad breast infection after another. Plugged ducts so bad they thought I had an abscess, Thrush, Mastitis and Staff, which gave me a fever of almost 103. I was in so much pain; it made childbirth look easy! 3 antibiotics in 4 weeks. Finally after making the hard decision to stop breastfeeding, my body started to heal and I was able to care for Sam and bond with him!
Its funny the one thing that gave me peace about giving birth, was I was told I wont be very coherent during it. I hate hospitals with a passion and couldn’t fathom being in one. I was told that your brain stops processing out of your frontal lobe and goes into sort of a protection mode, so you are there getting done what needs to be done, but not entirely comprehending what is going on. I guess that’s what a lot of people say they don’t remember giving birth. Let me be perfectly clear… I remember everything! I was extremely coherent, even to the point of cracking jokes with my doctor while I was pushing.
And his name! I cannot forget to mention his name…. I think people thought we were lying to them about not having a name, but we really didn’t! We had a very short list, but couldn’t come to any conclusion. We would have left without a name had they not needed us to stay an extra day, due to Sam being Coombs positive. Our nurse even suggested we go home and give it more thought, but with already going 10 months without a name, we needed a deadline. During pregnancy we called my belly Bob. Not for any specific reason, but he was just a little Bob in my belly. Christian would call during the day and say, “what’s Bob up to?” or i would get a big kick and say “Ouch Bob!” He started to feel like a Bob. So much so I told Christian and my parents to stop referring to him as Bob, because I cant see him as anything else. Well the day we left, we had about 5 minutes and finally settled on Sam (Samuel), which was on our short list. We started talking about middle names, Christian rattled off a few names and nothing felt like it fit, and then he said “Robert?” I high fived him and said “YES!”. There it was, Bob, the name we called him all along, would be apart of him forever. It was the only thing that made sense!
And then we arrived home…. where the adventure really begins! 