Samantha's Birth Story

Samantha Gary Lieu was born at 3:21 AM on Friday January 4, 2013.  She was 6lbs 3oz and 19 inches long!  She emerged into the world as quite a surprise, but we already feel so blessed to have her!  

Bonnie had her normal OB visit on Wednesday January 2nd.  She was 35 weeks, 5 days, and it was her first weekly visit to the OB since it was just the start of her last month.  Dr. Sison told her that she wasn't dilated at all and that she could expect to definitely make it to full term.  However, on Thursday the 3rd Bonnie was experiencing some excess fluid, and after a full day of teaching she decided to go into the ob's office again, just to make sure it wasn't amniotic fluid.  The doctor checked her, and told her she still wasn't dilated and it was not, in fact, amniotic fluid.  He told her to call the on-call doctor if anything changed, but he did not predict that anything was happening.

We were feeling relieved that Bonnie wasn't about to go into pre-term labor, but we had been sufficiently jolted into the reality of potentially going into the hospital before Bonnie's maternity leave actually started (She was scheduled to teach until the 11th-3 weeks before her due date).  So that evening we decided we should pack our hospital bags and fill out the hospital registration paperwork.  Thank goodness we had just spent days over Christmas break setting up the nursery with Barb, Bart, Kerri, and Eric, because Bonnie's body started to tell us that we had not been crazy that afternoon when we went to the doctor's office. By 8 PM, Bonnie's fluid had increased, and she started to feel what she thought was "minor period cramps."  We called Dr. Sison (so thankful- our doctor was the one on call from our practice that night!) and brought him up to speed.  At that point he thought there was no cause for concern since he had just seen me, but he told us to keep him posted if anything changed.

By 10 o'clock the contractions really started.  We wondered if they could be Braxton Hicks since we thought we knew Bonnie wasn't dilated, but they kept getting worse.  And by 11 o'clock we called Dr. Sison again.  He told us to start timing the contractions, and we realized they were coming approximately every five minutes and lasting for over a minute a piece.  With Bonnie starting to writhe in pain, we called Dr. Sison one last time and around 12:30 decided we should head to the hospital.  We still had some last minute things to put in our bags so Andrew ran around the house gathering items, while Bonnie increasingly felt more and more labor pains.  Finally as we were leaving at 1:15 AM and walking down the garage steps, Bonnie's water broke for real.  And we rushed off to the Princeton hospital.  

With adrenaline pumping, we arrived at the hospital.  They wheeled Bonnie up into labor and delivery, and much to our surprise when Dr. Sison met us up into the delivery room, he told us that Bonnie was 9.5 cm dilated.  We were shocked! It was too late to get the epidural, and he told Bonnie that she would want to start pushing soon.  The contractions had gotten really bad by that point, but we were all stunned that after only three hours of labor, she was fully dilated.  Bonnie started pushing at around 2AM, and after a little over an hour of pushing (it was sooo painful- thank goodness we had a great nurse and an amazing OB there!), we met our little girl! She started crying immediately, and Andrew got to cut her umbilical cord.  Dr. Sison also turned to us and asked us if anyone even knew we were at the hospital, and that was when we realized that everything had happened to quickly that no one else had any idea our little girl had been born!



Here she is just minutes after being born.  We were so lucky that even though she was what they consider "late preterm" being born at exactly 36 weeks, she was extremely healthy- scoring 9s on her Apgar tests, and weighing in at 6lbs 3oz.  Since it took Bonnie over an hour to push she had a little bit of a cone-head when she was born, but that was gone fairly quickly.  

A few minutes later, Bonnie got to hold her for the first time. 

Here is Andrew, after serving as wonderful labor support, holding his little daughter for the first time, as well. 

By 8 AM, they moved us into a post-partum room where we were able to stay until Sunday midday.  The new Princeton hospital is less than a year old and all of the new-mommy rooms are individually occupied.  We spent our next 48 hours in this room...

...which actually had an amazing view (If you went all the way up to the window you could actually see the tallest buildings on campus!)

We settled into our room on Friday, and finally we figured out what we were going to name our little girl.

Samantha had been one of the names on our short list for quite some time.  We liked that it had several syllables to balance out "Lieu." In addition, we appreciated the name's meaning. Samantha means "listener" and is derived from the Hebrew name "Samuel."  Her middle name Gary is Bonnie's mom's maiden name.  Thus Samantha shares her middle name with Barbara (Bonnie's mom) and also with somewhat accidentally but excitingly, Maddie Finn :)

Samantha had a little bit of trouble keeping her temperature high enough on Friday so they had to put her under a warming lamp.  Once she spent an hour under the lamp, she got her temperature back up and like a champ.

On Saturday, we had some visitors.  Charlotte, Christina, and the Mac Family all stopped by to meet Samantha.  And Barb and Bart came and stayed until Sunday to spend some time with their first grandchild.

One of the night nurses gave Samantha a girl hat with a bow!

Daddy and Mommy holding Samantha.

Because Samantha was "pre-term" she had to have a two hour car seat test to make sure she wasn't too small for the car seat.  She had to sit in her car seat while they monitored her breathing.  She passed with flying colors!

Our first photo as a family of three!

Dressed and ready to head home.

 Leaving the hospital and heading home!