Samantha's Birth Story

So much for first time labors lasting a while! I had some cramping off and on all evening on the 6th, but didn't really think much of it. I went to bed like normal and slept until about 2:30. I was in complete denial that I was actually in labor. My contractions were about 7 minutes apart, and I decided to do anything I could to slow them down, assuming it was false labor. I got in the tub for a while, drank a big glass of water, and laid down on my left side. No dice. Finally, around 5:00, I decided I better wake up Pat and call the midwife and my doula.

The doula was going to come over to the house to help decide when we should head to birth center, and then we were going to check back in with the midwife. Before my doula got to the house, my water broke, and the contractions got really intense. We called everybody back and told them just to head straight to the birth center.

The car ride to the birth center was awful. I was already fighting the urge to push. When we got to the birth center, I was fully dialated already, so they put me straight into the tub. Pushing only lasted about 35 mintues. The cord was around her neck and her little hand was by her face as she came out, so the midwife was amazed that it all went so quickly. Labor only took about 6 hours total. It was painful and intense, but totally worth it now that we're home with our sweet baby girl.

Introducing Samantha Marie Vogt!

Samantha was born at 8:04 AM on October 7th. She weighed in at 7 lb 13 oz and was 20 inches long. Her entire birth took less than 6 hours. I was worried that we weren't going to get to the birth center in time! Pat got us there safely, and now we're all at home doing well.

We don't have a ton of pictures yet, but I wanted to post a couple. We'll work on getting some more up here over the next few days as we (hopefully!) settle into a routine.

The first three were taken at the birth center right before we headed home. The last one is from today.

More Excitement Than We Bargained For

The last couple of weeks have been a little crazy baby-wise. It all started with a couple of bad appointments at the hospital on post. I was not crazy about how long I waited to get into my appointments or the amount of time that the doctors spent with me. At the first one, they completely forgot about me and left me sitting in the exam room for 30 minutes. At the next one, I had to remind the nurse to take a sample for a lab test. I'm all for taking charge of my own healthcare, but this was ridiculous. Then I was handed the standard procedures for Labor and Delivery and they didn't give me a warm-fuzzy feeling either. The worst one was that Pat wouldn't be able to stay at the hospital with me overnight once I have the baby. They kick all the husbands out at 10:00 PM and don't allow them to come back until 9:00 AM. The thought of this made me a little weepy (although some of that might have been hormones).

So, I started looking into alternative birth options, and we've decided to go with a midwife at a free-standing birth center (amazingly, it's covered by my work insurance!). I was 100% sure of my decision after my very first appointment with her. She spent a full hour with me at the appointment, and had found some areas of concern in the records I brought from the two military hospitals where I'd been seen. It turns out that I was severly anemic, and even though it was noted in my file that my iron stores were low when I was 7 weeks pregnant, no one had ever put me on a supplement or retested me. The midwife started me on a pretty high dose of iron immediately, and after 1.5 weeks I already have more energy. Low iron stores put women at risk for hemorrage during labor, so we're hoping to get mine up before Blasto decides she's ready to come out. She also saw that there was a note about my amniotic fluid levels being low at my 20 week ultrasound. No one had mentioned this to me or rechecked it, so the midwife sent us for an ultrasound on Wednesday.

Luckily everything turned out to be fine, but the ultrasound tech said that she would have sent me straight to the hospital if she had done the 20 week ultrasound. There's always a chance that the estimated was incorrect, but it bothers me that no one questioned it. I feel like I'm being cared for on a much more personal level now, and I have a lot less anxiety about my upcoming labor. Another good thing to come out of it was that we got a little peek at Blasto during the ultrasound. She was sucking her thumb the whole time, and was not very pleased about being poked and prodded. At the end, she absolutely refused to budge when the tech was trying to turn her to get some more measurements.

Here's one of the pictures from the ultrasound. You can see her little face with her thumb in her mouth. I can't believe we'll be meeting her in person soon!

The New Ride

Jo requested some pictures of the new car, so I thought I'd post them on here. We definitely feel like official Washington State residents now that we own a Subaru. It's an 06 Forrester for those who are curious. I'm just excited to be driving a car with an automatic transmission and 4 doors! Tomorrow we tackle installing the carseat.

Back to Nature

We've been enjoying some really lovely weather here in the Pacific Northwest lately. It's pretty much been sunny and warm, with the exception of Labor Day weekend. One benefit of all this nice, sunny weather is that we've been able to see a ton of Mt. Rainier. It's visible from all over post, and it's actually kind of startling sometimes to make a turn in the car and seeing it looming in the distance. It's so much taller than all the other mountains around it that it looks like it's all alone on the horizon.

We've actually been impressed with most of the scenery on post. Our neighborhood backs right up to a lake. There's a swimming area and a place to rent paddle boats and canoes. We had plans to spend the day there yesterday, but unfortunately all the fun stuff shuts down after Labor Day. Hopefully next summer we'll be able to take advantage of it all.

Since our lake plans didn't work out, we headed to a town just a couple of miles away called Dupont. We took a picnic lunch to enjoy in one of their parks, and then explored a couple of their walking trails. The first one took us along the golf course and had some nice views of Pugest Sound.



The second trail wound through a wooded area and was nice and cool because of all the trees and shade. We had kind of been going back and forth about getting Blasto a jogging stroller, but the trails convinced me. They're so nice and convenient, but a lot of them are gravel, so I think the jogging stroller will definitely be worth the money.

Mini-Roadtrips

A couple of weeks ago Pat and I decided to do some exploring in Seattle. We started with lunch at the Pike Place Market. We found a little place with a nice view of Puget Sound.

From there, we walked a few blocks to take the train to the Space Needle. We wandered around for a bit and then headed back to the market. We stopped at The Crumpet Shop and had some crumpets and tea. The crumpets were delicious and came highly recommended by one of my co-workers.


We found some good buys at the market. We found a fun little spice shop where Pat got some smoked paprika. We also bought some Snapper at the famous Pike Place Fish Market where they throw the fish. All the produce stands feed you as you walk by, so we bought some "Oh My God" Peaches that were super yummy (that's seriously how they were labled on the sign). And on the way out we got a huge bunch of flowers for$5!

Over Labor Day weekend we drove up to Bellingham to visit some of Pat's family. We stayed with his grandparents and also got to visit with his Uncle Don, Aunt Mary, and cousins Emma and Margaret. We had so much fun with them all. We got to explore Bellingham a little and even got to see Don and Mary's house. We went for a walk in a gorgeous park that is only a few blocks from their house, and I'm still kicking myself for not bringing our camera with us.

The trips are probably on hold for the next month or two. Blasto is full-term today (Yay!), so I'm getting to the point that I don't want to venture too far away from home.

Road Trip

We've found the box of camera chargers and cables that I forgot to set aside before the move, so I'm finally able to post some pictures from our road trip to Washington and the new neighborhood. The road trip itself went pretty smoothly. The drive across Iowa was brutally boring, but the scenery just got prettier and prettier as we went. Montana was absolutely gorgeous, although we weren't prepared for a high temperature only in the low 60s. Washington was no disappointment either.

We probably saw 300 signs touting the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, so we stopped in Mitchell for lunch to check it out.

We also took a little side trip through Badlands National Park. I highly recommend it if you're ever in the area. We would have liked to have spent more time there, but the weather was rainy and we still had a couple of hours in the car until we got to our hotel.

On the way to the Badlands, we stopped an area where you could feed prairie dogs. They were so cute, but obviously well fed. They were much fatter than the "wild" prairie dogs we saw in the park.

Mimi was a trooper through the whole trip. She stared at us angrily from her crate for most of the first day, but after that she would lay down and nap for most of the drive. Hopefully we won't have take her anywhere for a while.