The Sams Family: Baby Chloe is here!

About a week ago at this time, little did we know what surprises would be in store for us in the next 6 hours. Last Monday I was feeling off in the afternoon and decided to log off email early, as contractions were happening quite frequent and I was feeling nauseous. I emailed Andrew to let him know not to dilly dally after school, but by the time he and Mason were on their way home, the contractions had slowed down. Mason kept asking over dinner - "mommy does your stomach hurt?" It was pretty cute. After doing my usual Monday TV watching of Dancing with the Stars, I went to bed, still having contractions. The last few weeks I had been having many sleepless nights of trips to the bathroom every 2 hours or so, so it was not unusual to wake up again at midnight and around 2. But, I had a big awakening at 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning when my water broke. To say the least, it was a completely different experience from my induced labor and delivery with Mason.Andrew was in slight panic about scheduling his subsitute, and as he logged on our computer, we discovered our internet connection was gone due to weather. While he handled that, I was calling the dr. to determine if we needed to rush in. Of course, I gave our home # and after 30 minutes of waiting for a return call, we discovered our home phone was also out. We finally heard back and were told to head in given my water broke and I was diagnosed with Group Strep B - something that can be a concern for the baby during delivery.Our nice neighbor Anne was graceous enough to come over and wait at the house until my dad arrived. By the time we were in the car and on our way, I was having painful contractions every 2-3 minutes. Andrew dropped me at the ER while he parked the car and I got to enjoy the company of a wheezing homeless man. We were quite the duo for the ER staff at 3 in the morning - me in a wheel chair doubling over in pain and him gasping for breath. We spent little time in triage and were checked into a delivery room about 5 minutes later. After trying to deal with contractions for 1-1.5 hours, I decided it was time for the epidural. Similar to Mason's labor though, it didn't fully take and they had to come back and give me more.It was then that little Chloe's heartrate started doing funky things and they checked me, determining I had gone from 5-6 cm to 9.5 cm. My dr. was on call that day and starting her shift at 8, so I was trying to hold out. We helped start her day off with a bang, as she literally walked into the room, put on her scrubs and indicated that I needed to push. About 10 mins later, Chloe made her debut at 7 lbs, 2 oz. and 20 inches long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK-vdQvLkZM (Chloe's first hour and bath)

Mason meets Chloe

We feel so blessed to have two healthy and precious kids and are enjoying settling in and getting acquainted. Mason is a great big brother and loves to give his sister kisses. He also likes to cry sympathetically with her when she's upset, and his new favorite phrase when she's upset is "it's too loud in here." We can't help but laugh.

Chloe loves to sleep and so far seems to be an even-tempered baby. We will see if that continues.