Welcome to the world baby Savannah!

Welcome to the world Savannah!


Savannah Jane Stokes
Born Friday, March 25th at 9:20pm
7lbs, 8oz and 18in long!


My dear sweet baby girl has finally arrived! She's quietly sleeping in my lap right now and Bryant is out playing golf with his dad, brother and uncle, so I figured that while I had a few moments to spare, I'd tell her birthday story!

So Friday morning, I woke up feeling really crummy and Bryant convinced me to go back to bed and stay there all day if I felt like it. I had had some contractions the night before and a few that morning, but I had been having them off and on for weeks now so I brushed it off. At 12:15 that afternoon I decided to get up and make myself some toast. After I plugged in the toaster, I turned around to grab the bread when suddenly, I felt like I wet my pants (TMI, I know...) and I thought maybe I had (one of the joys of being pregnant) so I went to the bathroom to change.(first family photo! Excuse my tired face...)

Well, It was a lot more than expected and it just kept coming. So I called out to Bryant and asked his opinion. We decided that we had better go to the hospital to make sure if it was my water breaking or not. So I quickly jumped in the shower, finished making that toast (they don't let you eat when you're in labor so I made sure to eat before we went, just in case) grabbed the hospital bags and headed to the hospital around 2:30pm

We were admitted into triage and the nurse grabbed the PH test strips. She said that it needed to turn blue in order to be positive but that if it didn't they would keep me there for an hour then try again. Well, on the first test strip, it was bluer than blue! She said that meant that my membranes had definitely ruptured and that we were going to have a baby!

So we called my parents and Bryant's parents, and were then moved into a labor and delivery room. Since I still wasn't contracting regularly, or very hard, they decided to start me on pitocin
to get things moving. Not even 10 minutes after they started the pitocin, I started getting really hard and painful contractions. They said I could ask for the epidural at any time, but the monitor didn't show that I was contracting at all.

When I heard that, I thought I must be the biggest wimp in the world. The nurse said the monitor would show great big waves when I had a contraction, but the blue line was straight, maybe with an occasional wiggle, and here I was trying my hardest not to rip Bryant's hand off! So I decided to tough it out and wait for the epidural. Well after 40 minutes and feeling like the contractions were one on top of the other, I asked if maybe there was something wrong with the monitor. She came over to re-adjust it and as she did, she felt my stomach and said "oh wow! you are contracting big time!" so she went and grabbed a new monitor and hooked me up to it, and sure enough, those giant blue waves were a'rollin!

Thats when I decided to ask for the epidural.
And can I just say; Best. Thing. Ever.

Boy, oh boy are epidurals worth every penny! And honestly, it wasn't even that bad when they put it in. I think the IV in my hand felt worse actually. There was a literal 5 second pinch of pain and then my stomach, bum and legs were in numb heaven!

I was progressing pretty fast at this point. I was at 4 cm when I went to triage, and 5 when they started me on the pitocin. They said I would go about 1cm every hour, but after the first hour I was up to 8! So they cut the pitocin and let my body take over from there.

Anyways, after a little while, I got the extremely strong urge to push. It's crazy to describe because I literally could not stop my body from pushing on it's own. At least that's what it felt like.

(One proud daddy! He is absolutely wrapped around her finger!)

So I told the nurse that I really needed to push. She said that if I stated now, I would be too exhausted by the time the baby was in position. But seriously, I couldn't help it. So I told her that I really needed to push and she suggested that we do a few "practice pushes" to see if that would help with the pressure. So we did 3 or 4 pushes and she checked me. She got a surprised look on her face and said "I'm going to go get the doctor, this baby is coming fast!"

The doctor came in and checked me and said "did they test you with a PH strip to make sure your water broke?" when I told him about what happened at home and then that test strip that couldn't get any bluer, he said that it didn't really make sense because my bag of waters was still in tact. So he broke it for me. He said that he thinks the mucus plug broke or something.

Anyways, that will be the mystery of the day...

Well, we were fully into the swing of things so they brought two more nurses in, ready to help when she was born. I really think labor and delivery nurses are the best! I felt like I had my own little cheerleading squad in there. I half expected to see pom-poms in their hands! They were all so great and made me feel like super-woman!

So I continued to push, Bryant grinning from ear-to-ear and coaching me on my left, three nurses cheering me on on the right, and the doctor telling me how close she was at the end of the bed. They asked if I wanted a mirror and honestly, I was worried I'd be grossed out but I said yes anyways, just to try it. Surprisingly, I was really glad I used the mirror. It's a great motivator when you can actually see how close you are. Plus, it's actually pretty cool to watch your own baby be born! I highly recommend it.

So after pushing for under an hour, Savannah arrived!!!

As soon as she was born they put her on my chest while they cleaned her off. She coughed a couple of times, but wasn't crying. After half a minute, they began rubbing her trying to get her to cry. She did, but not very long so they ran her over to the warming table to try to get her to cry there. The nurse grabbed the oxygen and said "I don't know if I need this, she's breathing just fine and she's pinking up great, but she just won't cry!" Eventually, she just put a little bit of air under her nose and she gave us a pretty good cry for a minute. When they were going over her APGAR score, the nurse didn't know what to give her for breathing, since she was breathing just fine, but they score it on how good their cry is.

But in the end, she got a 7 out of 10 which is a really good score!

So they gave her back to me and I got to sit and hold her on my chest for a good little while. She was so beautiful and very alert. She kept trying to pick up her head to look around! She was also pretty hungry because she kept sucking on her fingers. So they took her down to the nursery to give her a bath and check her vitals.

(She's already a thumb-sucker. Plus I like this photo because she's a little wall-eyed in it and I think it's funny...)

They moved me down to the mothers rooms and they brought her back to me.

It was the best day of my whole life.

We were able to bring her home Sunday afternoon and we have been taking it pretty easy. We are enjoying just spending time snuggling and letting people take care of us (score on the ward dinners!)

Unfortunately, she's a little jaundiced so we've had to go to the hospital every day to get her blood drawn (it breaks my heart to watch them stick her with a needle. Thankfully, she sleeps right through it.) And she has to wear a bilirubin blanket, which is just a plastic paddle that straps onto her back and shines a light 24 hours a day. And we've been having a bit of trouble with feedings, but we are slowly getting the hang of it.

I've been doing pretty good too. I'm a little sore from the stitches and my back is a little achy from where the epidural was, but overall I feel pretty awesome.

I honestly couldn't be any happier. Being a mother feels like the most natural thing in the world and the labor and delivery process was such an amazing experience. I was so blessed to have an easy delivery and the worlds most beautiful baby!