HE'S WITH US!

Joshua Matthew Sams made his debut at 6:25pm on Monday night (about 12:25am Monday morning EST). He is 6lbs 8 oz, 17.3 in long. He was born without pain medication (woohoo!), induced by syntosin (like pitocin, DARN IT!), and breech - in three or four pushes, and one tiny rip that doesn't need stitches.
Because I know you want to know:
They checked his position at 10:00am, only to realized he had gone head-down again. As I'd said before, they really didn't want to try a vaginal birth with him head down for fear he'd be stillborn because of the trauma. So I agreed to another external version - with a shot of pethadine and a muscle relaxer (but believe me, that pethadine wore off before the contractions even got interesting). So he turned quickly, easily, and stayed put the rest of labor.
They almost immediately broke my waters. That was difficult because I was only 25% effaced and about 1 cm dilated. AT 41 WEEKS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? Then the Dr put me straight onto a syntosin drip (pitocin, artificial oxytocin) because they didn't want to give him time to flip back around. They kept upping the ml/hr and by about 2:30 or 3:00 I was feeling pretty miserable.
They took the drip off, hoping that I was far enough into labor to continue on my own. But after I started falling asleep and the contractions petered down to 15-20 seconds long and only ::decent::, back on the drip I went. That was 4:30pm, and at that point I was 80% effaced and 4cm dilated. I was getting the "WOW, that's a lot of dilating and effacing since your contractions weren't "good" until 1:30pm!" Haha.
Our extended family decided to go get something to eat, since we'd been told we were most likely looking at a 9pm delivery, and Matt and my midwife Pat stayed with me. I got in the shower because I was starting to have trouble through the contractions. While I was in the shower I started feeling a lot of pressure. Dinner arrived around 5:30 or 6:00 and I decided to get out and eat something while I was still "feeling ok". Wow, one smell of food was all I could take.
As I went to get back on the bed, I looked down at my legs which were now covered in meconium. I told my midwife and she sort of went, "Oh...". She decided to check my dilation because she said that was a sign he was decending a bit. So she checked me and I had dilated 6cm in 1.5 hours! I was at 10cm, with a slight anterior lip. WHOA! So Pat turned around and said, "Matt, text your family to get back here now!". My poor family were sitting down to eat dinner and get this text that says, COME BACK NOW. Haha. They took off running, and when they got back to the hospital (10 mins drive) I was in the delivery unit starting to push.
The doctor and midwife had said that I should be prepared to push for a long time because he was breech. But after 3 or 4 contractions and pushing through them, he was just.... there! He tried to cry, but he was a bit congested, so they cleared him out. He turned pink right away and had a good, strong heartbeat.

I was feeling pretty good, but not wanting to stay at the hospital, so 4 hours later we jumped in the car (ok, waddled slowly to the car) and came home to sleep in our own beds.

The whole family got a chance to hold him in the delivery room - man my 16 yr old brother is a trooper, I think he's seen more than he EVER wanted to see of me! We took endless pictures and a lot of video.

We prayed over him and dedicated his days to the Lord and to His purposed before we all went to sleep. He doesn't cry much, just a few little peeps - so I have to set an alarm to get up and feed him. But that was the biggest miracle of all! He's eating! When we were still in the delivery room, he started making mouths at me and I gave him my finger - he went to town! So we decided to try breastfeeding, and he's a CHAMP! Wow!

He seems to have some amount of sight because he is easily startled by camera lights. We're not sure about his hearing, but he's very aware of movements and can get startled/frightened easily by sudden touching or bumping.
Oceana is doing great, and likes to talk about him - "Baby!" but doesn't seem to like holding him. That's fine, she's 21 months and that's just nervewracking!

That's my brother Josiah, my dad Mike, my mum Jeannie , Matt's mum Pam, and our family of FOUR!

Please pray that Joshua stays with us, as long as it is best for him. We don't want him to be in pain. Thank you for all your prayers yesterday while we were in labor.