Welcome Olivia!

Olivia has arrived and she is BEAUTIFUL! She arrived yesterday and here's the stats:

Date: June 14, 2008

Time: 12:21 pm

Weight: 7 lbs 8 oz

Length: 19"

Ok, so here is the run-down of the big day. Grant and I were playing Yahtzee late Friday night and I was feeling a little crampy. I went to the bathroom around 12:25 and noticed that I was "leaking" . . . oh-my-god "I think my water broke!" It wasn't one of the "whoosh" type breaks, but it definitely broke and was a trickle - pretty constant. Then, right away I started having pretty bad contractions. So we called the doctor's office and they paged the doc on-call and when she called us back - she said to head to the hospital.

So we finished packing pretty quickly and headed to the hospital. In the car we timed the contractions and they were only about 3 1/2 minutes - and they were strong! Wow, this is moving fast!

We got to the hospital around 1:30. We got into our room and checked in pretty quick. They first checked me at around 1:45 and I was 3 cm. I had my IV by 2:15 and my *1st* epidural by 2:30. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me. It only numbed my left leg, not my abdomen or my right side AT ALL. It felt like my right hip was going to explode! So, they tried injecting extra medicine into my epidural twice to try to boost the pain meds - but again, it didn't touch my right side at all. By 3:45 am I was 5 cm along and in much pain!

And by the way, my contractions were coming one right after the other! No breaks! Grant said the monitor looked like a heartbeat! The doctor even put an internal monitor on me and an internal head monitor on Olivia to make sure she was tolerating the rapid contractions and that nothing was wrong since they were coming so fast and so furious! So this was appearing to be an even rougher experience than I had anticipated!

So, they called the anesthesiologist back and he took out my epidural and re-did it for me to try to get it to work better. This would be epidural #2. Shortly after this, at around 5:00 am I was 6 cm. That's when we decided it was time to call the parents and tell them to hit the road! (we didn't want to wake them up in the middle of the night and have them frantically driving through the night!). So, everyone was on their way.

Unfortunately, my *2nd* epidural also didn't work. Same as the first - it didn't touch my right side and I was in a ton of pain! I think it was worse than not having one because all the pain became focused on just my right side. They tried to give me extra medicine again and it didn't work - again! Only to make me very nauseous (like the others did).

At 7:45 am I was 8 1/2 cm. By this time, I was hanging in there without any pain relief and about to climb the walls. This time, a new anesthesiologist had started his shift and he came to try a *3rd* epidural. He tried inserting it a bit differently and we all had our fingers crossed that this would work! They also had me lay on my right side so that gravity would help it get to my right side. It worked! Thank heavens!

I was happy and smiling by 8:10 or so and felt like a new woman! This was heaven!

Then all the parents showed up and we were able to enjoy their company for a little bit. At just before 10:00 they thought I might be ready to start pushing soon so we had them all go down to the waiting room. So They checked me again and I was just about 10 cm, but had one little piece of cervix that was in the way (on the right side). So they had me roll over onto my left side to try to get Olivia to help push up under it to get it to open up right.

The only problem with this was that once I rolled onto my left side to get my cervix to dilate fully, my epidural stopped working on my right side! Ugh, not this again! So, I was back to square one again! They tried once more to boost my pain meds - to no avail! So I had to just deal with the pain the rest of the way!

At around 11:20 they told me I could start pushing! Yeah, let's get this show on the road! So, fortunately, the epidural did at least help with this part! It was much better to push then to deal with the contractions. I pushed for a little bit, then once I figured out how to push correctly, I had her crowning in no time. Time to go get the doctor. He showed up and Olivia was born at 12:21 pm.

Wow, what a long 12 hours! But it was all worth it. She is here and she is perfect! Here are some of her pictures from shortly after she arrived:

Happy Father's day, Daddy!