Olivia Laurie - a birth story (long version)

Olivia Laurie Anderson was born at 3:26am on June 3rd at Saddleback Hospital in Laguna Hills.  She was my biggest baby at 7lbs 5 ounces and 18 inches long.


My due date with Olivia was June 1st.  You can imagine our surprise when she came AFTER her due date.  We had been telling everyone we would have her a few weeks early since all the others came right after 37 weeks.  So the last few weeks were pretty rough with just expecting her to come and her not coming.  I felt like I couldn't plan anything, was constantly trying to stay on top of everything, and just felt frustrated.  I also had to endure weeks of comments that I hadn't had my baby yet (Thank you, I noticed).

I went in to my doctor on my due date - Monday the 1st -  and I was still dilated to a 4 (I had been for the past 2 weeks).  She was finally willing to schedule an induction since I was a full 40 weeks.  I scheduled for Wednesday morning at 7am.  I figured that would hopefully give me Tuesday to see Mia's Kindergarten performance and to see Chase's last baseball game on Tuesday night.  And then I could plan on my mom coming down Tuesday night to stay with the kids so we could get to the hospital bright and early Wednesday morning.  I had been looking forward to actually going into labor on my own with my last pregnancy, but enough was enough and I was ready to get on with the next phase of my life. 

Tuesday I woke up feeling kind of lousy.  I prayed and prayed that I could make it through to see Mia's kinder performance.  I felt a little better, made it to the performance, and even took the girls to the pool after school.  I picked up my Mom from the train station later that day and we went straight to Chase's baseball game.  During Chase's game I started feeling contractions.  But they weren't too painful and not regular.  I prayed that I could make it until after his game.  I didn't want to dramatically pull Matt (who is the coach) off the field in the middle of the game, plus they had a little end of season pizza party after the game.  All was fine and we made it home and got the kids to bed.  Matt, Mom and I watched TV after they went to bed and I kept having contractions.  Still not too regular, but at least every 15 minutes.  I went to bed at 10:30 but the contractions kept coming.  I tried timing them and eventually fell into restless sleep, dreaming of contractions.  I woke at 12:30, got up and had a more painful contraction.  I told Matt with certainty, let's go to the hospital.  I felt very grateful for my ability to know with certainty it was time to go.  Having never gone through this before, I was worried I wouldn't know when the time to go would be and wouldn't make it in time.  I had been praying that I would know when the time was.  And I did.  I knew without doubting it was time to go.

We got to the hospital around 1am, calling both the doctor and hospital along the way.  I was beyond grateful that Mom was already at our house and we could just leave quickly.  We got into the ER and the lady at the desk looked at me and said "Labor and Delivery?'  "How did you guess?" I asked.  And then she said I was the 4th labor and delivery to come in the last 20 minutes.  While she was on the phone with labor and delivery another pregnant girl came in, followed shortly by one more.  So the three of us were taken up to labor and delivery and I got checked in quickly.  Because I was scheduled for induction in less than 6 hours, all of my paper work was already ready to go. 

After the nurse set up the monitors and asked me the five thousand questions they have to input in the system, she finally checked me.  She was shocked to see I was already dilated to a 6.  She said she couldn't believe it since I was so calm and just chatting with her.  My contractions were probably 6-7 min apart by this time.  My awesome nurse said she was going to track down the anesthesiologist and have him come to my room first.  I heard her in the hallway insisting he come to me first since I was a 6 dilated and it was my 4th child.   The anesthesiologist got to my room about 2am and I had the smoothest and least painful epidural to date.  It was my first time getting one sitting up, rather than lying on my side, and it was quick and easy.  I immediately felt relief and was able to relax a bit. Dr. Hahn (who was not my doctor, but the on call doctor for the practice, but was great) came in to break my water shortly after.  I was already dilated an 8.  I hung out for about 45 minutes and the nurse came back, checked me, said I was fully dilated and asked to do a "practice push".  She said I was ready and called the doctor back in.  I gave two full pushes and looked down and saw the baby's head out.  This was crazy since a)  I didn't feel like I pushed very hard and b). I had never looked down to see this and it was just crazy.  I gave a half push and out the rest of her came and she started crying.

They put her on me and I felt a surge of amazement - I couldn't believe I had another baby and another baby girl - and a surge of relief - she is here and is healthy.

Another first for us was that we still hadn't decided on a name.  The nurses were asking what names were on our list and they both said they liked Olivia.  The pediatric nurse even started calling her Olivia.  It really just felt right and we decided very quickly that her name would be Olivia Laurie.