Olivia's birth..

In honor of Olivia's birthday this week. This was her birth story I wrote up like several years ago, so I had to edit some stuff just to make it current again, and like all birth stories I'm sure its missing somethings cause its easy to forget some of the details when your laboring. Olivia's birth experience was great...It was filled with lots of family and friends(Patti N., Heather B., My mom, Luke's Mom, Luke were all in the room with me, and both Grandfathers and Dustin M. were in the living room waiting).



I was 36 weeks and 5 days(Jan. 5th '05) when I was laughing with my mother about how I thought my water had broken that morning when in all actuality I had just leaked a little..haha...so I left my mom's house(we live right next door to them) and needed to go to the bathroom. I went and when I stood back up I felt like I peed again..and thought, oh man..I'm losing control of my bladder! But I sat back down and it just kept coming out, so I called my husband at work and he wasn't there, he was headed home fortunately since we had a Midwife appointment that day for my 36 week ultrasound. So I called my Mom and she came over and talked to me for a while and at around 3:30 I went to my appointment.

They checked me and said yep, you sure did bust your water, and that I wasn't dialated or effaced at all!(I was super scared about that cause I thought I was in it for the long haul at that point). The Ob there(Dr. Adcock for those interested) did my ultrasound(still girl!) and told me Olivia was estimated at around 8 lbs. 1 oz. and said she was sunny side up(Posterier). Ugh..! No contractions as of then...went home. Called my 2 girl friends that would be in attendance and my MIL. Both my friends came over around 8pm and we just hung out. At around 11pm I decided to start taking some Blue Cohosh to get things going..did a round at 11, and did another round at 12. I decided to try and go to sleep while I could. I woke up around 3:30am and started having timable contractions. My contractions started at 5 minutes apart and quickly went to 3(I jumped in the shower around 4:30 for a while..) I came out to the livingroom and tried laboring on my birth ball, bad idea. It didn't feel good to me at this point. Decided walking and leaning worked best for me and I dealt fairly well with the pain that way. At around 7:30am we decided to call my mom. I labored in my living room walking and having Luke and Patti press on my back during those other hours not mentioned. I got in the tub about 8:15am and decided to try and see if I felt anything in there, and sure enough I could feel head at the end of my fingers...so I started pushing...!! I pushed for a while in the tub but didn't feel productive and I hated the bright lights of the bathroom(and the crowded feel it gave me.) Moved to the toilet for a few pushes...felt nice but wasn't doing much. Walked to the bed and got on hands and knees...pushed for about 30 minutes this way and did a good bit of progress here. I finally decided to lay back against Patti and did a semi recline but still upright position, as soon as I did this I felt her head start to crown. Ah..lots of pressure and about 6 pushes later, my beautiful 8 lbs(even) baby girl came out...!!(at 9:45am on January 6th..) I only had a super super minor tear that required no stitches and wasn't even an issue...after cutting the cord, we delivered the placenta and then I had help taking a shower. Got back in bed, my MIL gave DD her first bath and we snuggled in bed and nursed. All the men got to come in later(after nursing) and see the baby and Dustin made me Potato soup which is now a staple for me after having a baby. :)







Don't think I would have changed anything about her birth experience really...outside of just being more prepared for it! haha..I didn't have ANYTHING set up for the birth, my baby shower was that coming Sat, so we didn't really have a lot of the basic baby stuff things like that..But that was fixable.