Samuel is born

Samuel was born alive on Monday evening (Jan 25th) at 9:57pm weighing 4 lbs 12ozs @ 18 inches long. Samuel lived for 33 precious minutes before passing away in our arms.

My water broke at 5pm that evening which initiated nice, steady contractions fairly quickly. I knew we didn’t have much time. Dan raced home and we got our stuff together and we arrived at the triage center @ the hospital at 6pm. There, they monitored my contractions and Samuel’s heart beat for about 2 hours while I lied in a bed the whole time. Things seemed to be moving at a nice slow pace for the most part. My contractions were still about 4-5 min apart (dilated to 3cm) and Samuel’s heart rate hovered around a consistent 150-160 bpm. As soon as our delivery room was ready, I chose to walk myself there without any assistance from the staff. I had all of about 10 minutes to walk/look around the room before the ‘real’ strong labor pains kicked in. I barely could walk myself to the bed. Once I made it, the nurse confirmed I was dilated to 7 cm and paged the perinatologist to come to our room because I was progressing so rapidly. Within 5 more minutes I was at 10 cm and ready to push. The doctor was still not there yet and I had to breathe short breaths through my agonizing contractions until the doctor arrived. It probably only took a few minutes, but for me and without pain medication, it seemed like an eternity. The doctor threw on his gown and mask so quickly and got into position for delivery. In 3 pushes, Samuel was born alive!

Samuel was not strong enough to cry, open his eyes, or completely gain a full pink color through his few intermittent breaths but his heart was beating and he was breathing. The doctor placed him on my chest immediately after his birth and was then later wrapped up and handed to his dad’s arms. We loved the fact he was alive and that we got to meet him for the very first time! We took the opportunity to tell him how much we loved him and how proud we were of him because he was such a strong little fighter. He did everything he could, and fought the good fight so that he could meet his mommy and daddy if only for a very brief period. He showed no signs of discomfort and seemed completely at peace during the short beautiful minutes of his life. At 10:30 pm the nurses did a final check and confirmed that Samuel was gone. He lived for 33 very short minutes. After he passed we called for our family to join us in the delivery room as we said our good-byes and took our final pictures with our sweet little guy.

He remained with us for the next 15 ½ hours after being transferred to our post partum room. We just couldn’t let him go. We knew his perfect soul was no longer in his frail little body, but somehow this was more comforting to us to have him with us. We didn’t want to go back to the room empty handed. Sleep was overrated at that point and neither of us could take our attention from him. We got to study his wonderful little features. We got the opportunity to note how he looked so much like our son Luke. We got the time we needed to pray together, weep together and pray over him. We really enjoyed and treasured the time we had with him. Our time with him was so sweet and short that we didn’t care about anything else. It was like the outside world wasn’t even there and time itself stopped and the only thing that existed was Samuel, his Momma, his Dada and God’s presence.

We are so thankful to God letting us be Samuel’s parents and allowing us the time we did have with Samuel. We prayed so hard to have ‘some’ time with our little boy and God responded! He knew our hearts and desires. We take comfort knowing he is now in the arms of Jesus. He has blessed us with so much in life already and though this experience was very hard to endure we both would not change it for the world. God is now giving us the strength and comfort to get through this rough period and we know our lives will forever be enriched by this whole experience; in our relationship to each other, to Luke and to our friends and family around us. That knowledge and the future life experiences we are to live on and have, is gift enough.

We'll be posting pictures from Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep photography soon.

Note to friends and family: In lieu of sending flowers or gifts of which we are grateful, we’ve decided that your gifts would be best served by making a donation to one of 3 organizations:

1) San Diego Hospice (the SD Hospice folks have been so great to us in the past weeks)

2) Another personal site that we found a great help and resource (with personal stories of survivors of Trisomy 13) that is very near and dear to our heart and is funded by a family with a surviving Trisomy 13 child where you can make a donation if you wish can be found here:

http://www.livingwithtrisomy13.org

3) A final site where Trisomy 13 and 18 that funds Research/Education/Awareness accepts donations is here:

http://www.hopefortrisomy13and18.org