Sam Role‘s birth plan took a scary turn before she and fiancé Chris Wise safely welcomed daughter Isabella Myra via cesarean section on Sept. 7.
“I was all set seeing my doctor every week the last month of my pregnancy, just like anyone else. The last week of pregnancy, I just knew that she wasn’t going to come on her due date. I had been having painful Braxton Hicks contractions for six weeks,” the Married at First Sight star recalls to PEOPLE exclusively.
Although she says “Everything about my pregnancy was dubbed as normal” initially, Role, 33, still feared that her baby girl would be “coming a month early” due to the false labor pains.
“They checked to see if I was dilated and I was by a centimeter and a half, but she wasn’t ready to come (which I was totally okay with). Fast forward to my last week of pregnancy and my dilation hadn’t changed at all. The baby was in the right position, head down, ready to go,” the new mom remembers.
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After the couple scheduled a day for Role to be induced, they were “ready” to meet their daughter. But the labor would prove to be a difficult experience.
“So the induction date comes and I go to the hospital and am given some medicine to begin contractions around 9 p.m. I was up the entire night in excruciating pain. Around 7 a.m. the doctor came to check my dilation and still nothing changed. Only one and a half centimeters dilated,” Role shares.
Hours went by before the doctor gave her an epidural and the baby’s head had dropped. “At this point I was in labor for 16 hours. The doctor came back to check me around 4 to 5 p.m. and my dilation hadn’t changed, and the scariest part was that her head had gone back up the birth canal rather than down,” she recalls.
“The doctor looked at me and said he was concerned. No one wants to hear that from their doctor when they’re pregnant, especially when they’re about to give birth. He then said that he was recommending a C-section because it didn’t make sense to him as to why she had gone back up the birth canal and I wasn’t dilated any further.”
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Role took her doctor’s recommendation into consideration and consulted with fiancé Wise, who had returned home to take care of their pets.
“We decided the best thing to do would be to proceed with the C-section. Chris then rushed back to the hospital and as soon as he walked in he was scrubbed up and I was already on the operating table prepped and ready to go,” she says.
“It was one of the scariest moments of my life. When the doctor said he was concerned, that scared me enough to really consider this option and I’m glad I did.”
Since baby Isabella’s birth, Role has been sharing cute updates of their newborn on social media. On Saturday, the proud parent shared a photo of her 2-week-old spending quality time with her dad. “I love this little girl!! … She loves sleeping on @chrisw1687 chest!” Role captioned the father-daughter picture on Instagram.
Married at First Sight airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on Lifetime.
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