Olive's Birthday story

Ever since I was a little boy on the day I was born my mom would tell me my 'Birthday Story.' I always loved hearing about my parents and what they were doing right before I arrived. To this day I still request my story each year, and can't wait to start telling Olive hers...

Last Friday was Molly's last day of work so we went out for Thai food to celebrate. After dinner we shopped for the long Christmas weekend. We had a menu planned for Christmas Eve and Christmas day and we also rented a bunch of videos to watch. We were planning on a nice long weekend at home together.

Saturday and Sunday was spent mostly getting the house organized and cleaned up. We are still sorting through a few leftover boxes from the move. We were quite productive and Molly decided she would make and decorate some sugar cookies on Sunday. She made icing and spent most of the afternoon decorating the cookies with pretty designs as well as baby type things. We rewarded ourselves with a pizza delivered by Domino's. We were so excited because we had not lived in a place that would deliver a pizza since our brief stay in New York in 2001. It made for a nice dinner.

Molly was worn out after such a long day on her feet and we sat on the couch and vegged out the rest of the evening. We went to bed about 10:30pm. Molly woke up at about 2am thinking she was feeling some contractions. She waited until 3 to wake me up and when she did she asked me to start timing her. After fumbling around in the dark I found my stopwatch that I had been carrying the last few months for just that reason. We timed her for a few hours and decided to get dressed and go downstairs just in case. I gave the dogs and cat a quick lesson in using the doggie door in case we were going to be gone for awhile.

At about 6:30 we decided the contractions were regular enough and had been going for long enough that we should head for the hospital. It was about 20 degrees, but thankfully there was no snow or ice on the road. It was a quiet ride, I remember a story on NPR about the Iowa Caucuses, an we both laughed about how complicated they seemed.

We got to the Labor and Delivery area right before 7am and they put us in the triage room where they decide if they are going to keep you or send you home. We were really hoping to stay. When the nurse came in to check Molly she was just slightly dilated and she encouraged us to take a walk around the hospital because that would sometimes speed things up. She told us to come back around 9am. We slowly walked around, stopping in the cafeteria to get me a little breakfast, and at the gift shop where we looked in the windows and chuckled at the 'Baby's First Christmas' items. Around 8:30 Molly was getting extremely uncomfortable and we headed back to Labor and Delivery.

The nurse, Holly (who was the head nurse and only checking on Molly because there were 4 other women already in Labor), checked Molly again she decided she had dilated enough to keep her. They put Mol in a wheelchair and pushed her down to a birthing room. (Oddly enough, the same room pictured in an earlier blog entry of our hospital tour.) It was then that I retrieved our bags and started to make the calls to family and friends.

Our regular Doctor was out of town for the week (we had a feeling we would go in while he was away for the Holidays) and so we met the on call Doc who turned out be a very nice woman named Jill Zurawski. We were also fortunate to have the head nurse with us all day. We felt very well taken care of throughout the entire labor.

Molly's contractions started getting more and more severe, and by about 11 she was in a lot of pain. She decided that she would get an epidural for relief. I was glad as it was getting tough to see her in so much pain. (She was also about to rip my fingers off during some of the bad contractions.) The epidural gave her almost instant relief and she was even able to sneak in a little nap or two between nurses visits.

After Molly's water broke things really started moving. An hour later (about 3:45) the nurse said she had called the Doctor and that Molly could start pushing. Molly put on her game face and really went to work. The Doc arrived a few minutes later, suited up, and sat on the edge of the bed. She chatted with us about the Holidays and her kids, and put both of us at ease. She encouraged and coached Molly and was so laid back about the whole process.

And, of course, Molly was amazing as well. She was so tough and did a great job. I was so impressed. Only 45 minutes after she started, she readied herself for the last set of pushes. With one last gasp there was a little head. The Doctor noticed right away that the cord was wrapped around the head twice. She clamped it and gave me the scissors to cut. Seconds later the little body followed, and the Doctor announced, "It's a girl! Olive is here."

Poor little Olive was a little blue from the cord, and had a very low APGAR score, so they took her directly to the warming table and got her some oxygen and rubbed her down. After just a minute or two, her color returned and she was brought to Mom. All was well, and we were three.


It was then time to make all the exciting phone calls to announce the newest family member. After weighing and measuring and taking some vitals, they moved us all upstairs to our room where we would spend our first night as a family.