Welcome, Samuel!!

Well, folks...he's here...finally!! Welcome to the world, Samuel Edwin Burrow.
Here are a few pictures from right after birth. Most were taken by our phones so forgive the quality. There are better ones further down...so keep reading.

Our first family photo...taken by my anesthesiologist.

These are just a few taken in the hospital.
Here I am the night before we went to the hospital....Feb. 8 2011

I will now pepper in the birth story between all of these wonderful 1 week pictures (taken by our dear friend, Aaron)


We were scheduled for an induction/water breaking at 6 am on February 9. I was a week over due and so we headed to the hospital at 5 that morning. Even with all of our "plans" to labor at home for the most part, it was nice to just go to the hospital and get it started.
We got checked into the hospital and set up in our labor and delivery room and were ready to go by about 7. The doctor came in and broke my water and 20 minutes later I felt my 1st contraction. About 45 minutes after that, I was IN IT!! Contractions were pretty active and about 5-10 minutes apart. My doctor checked in before she went to do her office hours around 9 and asked me to try and not have the baby before she was done at 1:).
Contractions progressed pretty quickly after that and I was on my exercise ball but they couldn't keep a good read on his heartbeat so I had to get into the bed....not my favorite...
So Jason was a champ and helped me into the bed and got me through a couple more hours of really hard contractions. All of this is with no drugs, by the way. Not bragging, just wanted to experience everything that God intended...
So I stayed in the bed and got to the point where I really wanted to push. My doctor was back by this point so they found her and I gave him a good push. He didn't budge so I pushed through a couple more contractions and she found he was just too high up. She suggested I stand for a while and see if I could get him to drop down before we pushed again.
I labored on my feet for about an hour and we gave it another go. He had dropped a little but not enough that I could push him down. Throughout all of the pushing his heart-rate was dropping dramatically and not recovering quickly.
She said I could get back up on my feet and labor a while longer or we could talk about a c-section. I really didn't want that to be an option so I started to get out of the bed. She watched one more contraction and was so unhappy with his heart-rate, she came up to my head of the bed and said, "Honey, we're done..."
She recommended a c-section and quickly. Jason and I had a quick cry but decided we trusted our doctor implicitly and it was the right thing to do. She was amazing the entire time.
Things moved pretty quickly from there. I got as comfortable as I could in the bed (just because you agree to a c-section doesn't mean they turn the contractions OFF!!). They wheeled me into the operating room on the same floor just around the corner while Jason changed into his scrub suit and mask and gathered our things to take to my mom in the hallway.
The operating room was an interesting adventure without Jason to get me through some really hard contractions. My doctor held on to me and helped me breathe through them so they could get the drugs into my back. Once that was done, I was an entirely different person. I even found myself wondering why I hadn't chosen this route in the first place......
The pain was gone and I was about to meet the little mess that had been kicking me from the inside for 9 months!!! I cried a lot while they got started and Jason came in. I just really hadn't wanted it to come to a c-section and I was worried about everything I had heard about him being a different sort of baby....so silly....
The c-section experience was actually remarkable. Kind of neat to feel the weight of him come directly out of the center of me. Jason left my head to go see him and watch them weigh and clean him. I listened to him cry from across the room and Jason kept yelling updates in my direction. He was completely fine and perfect. The rest of the recovery was fairly normal.
I was in recovery for a little while so the feeling could come back to my legs and then they moved me to my postpartum room for the next 3 nights. The staff at the hospital was absolutely incredible. I was taken such good care of and cannot say enough nice things about St. Luke's Roosevelt hospital. I sort of wish I could go back...:)

So that's the story and I hope it wasn't too much information. I tried to keep it tame enough for the world wide web. I promise promise promise I will be better about the blogging. I have all this time off, I have nothing else to do...

Welcome welcome welcome, little monkey!!