We've Made the Switch!

We have officiallly made the switch to cloth diapers for Samantha. I'm loving the ones we finally settled on. They have several rows of snaps, so you can adjust them to fit babies from 8 lbs - 35 lbs. I snapped a couple of pictures of Sammy showing off her cute pink cover. I think she looks pretty pleased!



In other news, Samantha is continuing to gain weight well. She was 8 lbs 11 oz on Tuesday. This means that she'll be over 9 lbs at her weight check next week. She also passed her newborn hearing screening with flying colors. Woo hoo!

Samantha's First Visitors

We enjoyed a really nice visit with my parents over the weekend. We were excited for Samantha to get to meet her Grandparents for the first time. We weren't able to get out and do much, but we did go out to eat and take my parents on a little tour of post. We also hit the PX and the Ft. Lewis museum. It was nice to know that if Samantha hadn't done well on the outings, we had 4 adults to try to soothe her instead of just Pat and me. Luckily, Sammy was a champ! She spent most of the outings sleeping. If she happened to wake up, all I had to do was feed her to keep her quiet and happy.

Speaking of feeding her, after a slow start, Samantha is now gaining weight well. At her lowest, she had dropped to 7 lbs, 6 oz. A week ago, she was back up to 7 lbs, 10.5 oz. I was a little nervous when I took her to get weighed yesterday (it's hard to tell how much milk she's actually getting during each feeding), but she weighed in at a whopping 8 lbs, 3 oz! It makes some of the marathon nursing sessions we've had totally worth it!

I was planning on posting a family picture that I had my Dad take, but when I downloaded them to the computer I was shocked to see just how sleep deprived Pat and I look in them. So much for using it for the Christmas cards this year! We'll try again after a good night's sleep. For now, you'll have to settle for the family minus Mommy.

Taking a Walk

We decided to bundle Samantha up in her stroller yesterday and take her for a walk around the neighborhood. It was nice to get out and get some fresh air. She stayed awake the whole time, but she definitely looked perplexed by the whole situation.

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.