Sephira's Arrival into the World!

SEPHIRA LEE SIVERTS
Born Monday, September 8th, 2008 @ 6:37pm
8 lbs. 6 oz.
20-3/4" long

"Sephira" is of Greek origin and means "beautiful jewel". It is a derivative of Sapphire, which is the birthstone for September.

"Lee" is a family name on both sides. The middle name for Effie's mother and grandmother, a derivative of her great-grandfather's name "Leif", and of Dirk's father, Leif, and grandfather LeRoy.

Our last "pregnant" photo. Sunday afternoon, September 7th, 2008.








We started timing contractions around midnight Sunday night, and checked in to the hospital around 4:30am Monday morning when contractions were 5 minutes apart. At that time, Effie was only 1cm dilated so the doctor wasn't going to be in until later in the morning.

At 8:10am Dr. Stenshoel did an exam and announced we were 4cm's, at which time we were finally in "active labor", however Effie's water had not yet broken. Roughly two hours later the doctor returned to break the bag of waters to help the labor the progress. During this time various family and friends arrived to support and encourage both Effie and Dirk - which also gave Effie a great tag team rotation of people to help massage and put pressure on her back and hips.

Even with all the good work Effie was doing dilation still progressed very slowly, so by 4:30pm Dr. Stenshoel administered Pitocin to make stronger contractions... however they didn't feel weak to start with!

The combination of Pitocin and using positions to help her rotate finally got us to 10cm at about 5:45pm. Effie had to do "Hollywood breathing" to keep from pushing for about 15min and then the Doctor said "it's time to push"... at which time the contractions started to ease so the Pitocin was bumped up to get them rolling again. Sephira's head crowned and progressed millimeter by millimeter for at least 6-8 good sets of pushes.








Effie pushed with all her might and finally our beautiful daughter emerged into our world with a gasp and squall. She then pooped and peed all over mom, the nurses, and then the respiratory therapists.




Sephira had to have her stomach decompressed as she'd swallowed a large amount of amniotic fluid during the delivery, which impeded her ability to breath effectively.




















With her stomach emptied she turned a rosie pink and was taken back to Effie so she could do her first nursing. Sephira latched on with ease.

At this time we looked into her lovely little face and announced her name.

Doctor and Nurses were amazed at how poised Effie was during such a long and hard labor without any type of pain medication. Labor was ~19 hours long, 10 of which were "active" labor at the hospital.




Later the nurses washed and weighed Sephira, and combed her curly little locks of light brown hair.





















Click here to view the online announcement from RiverBend hospital!







Sephira and Effie with Dr. Tamara Stenshoel.