Olivia's story

Here is the sad thing - I should have started one of these when I got pregnant with her, as I have to say, that whole year seems like a big blur. I remember that I once again found out I was pregnant on a baseball night, as Jeff was on his way to ball when I took the test. We were a little freaked out, as Ethan was not really very old at the time. We started to do the math and realized that the kids would only be 15 months apart. This is what we wanted....I can honestly say there has been many a days where I have thought "what the hell was I thinking?". Of course, I likely would have thought the same thought, even if the kids had four years between them.

I immediately went into three months of headaches, serious morning sickness and early swelling. There was no gestational diabetes this time around, although I was tested for it a couple times (I tend to get VERY big when pregnant), no placenta previa and no other complications until the very end. It was very busy to have a toddler that had just barely stopped breastfeeding to growing a new one in my belly. Ethan did not walk until a week before Olivia was born. This was a bit taxing on Mommy to say the least, as he is NOT a small child.

The last month, I was put on bed rest as I was having spells. Everybody kept telling me over and over how big I was, and how big the baby was going to be and how big I was....it got to be a bit much somedays I tell you. I went through much angst over whether to have a VBAC or not. I ended up booking the section, and as murphy's law would have it, I went into labour the night before the date of the c-section. With no induction or anything. That was quite a relief and I was thankful that this was fate talking to me and telling me it was okay to have her naturally.

Well, I was in labour for the whole day, got the epidural, was doing quite well with the contractions. Around 6:30pm, it was time to push. I was so thrilled. I did the first couple of pushes and then was asked to stop because the baby went into a bit of distress. They hooked up a monitor to her head and we changed my position and away we went again. Time to push. Well I was pushing for about 15 minutes, and Olivia crowned, Jeff got to see it and everything. Then there was a noise in the hallway, nurses and doctors running yelling "stop pushing, tell her to stop pushing". Everytime I tried to push Olivia out, she would stop breathing. It was because she was sunnyside up. The doctor tried to reposition her when I was pushing, but then it became too risky to push due to the distress of the baby. Forceps or C-section.....well you all know my choice. C-section. For some reason they turned off my epidural while they were getting the delivery room available, which left me fully dilated, in full labour under strict instructions NOT to push. I was in quite a bit of pain, not able to move about fully and had to wait over an hour due to some delays......it was horrible.

Then the surgery happened. They got Olivia out of my womb, we were thrilled to find out we had a baby girl. They wisked her away and she didn't come out of the neonatal room for over ten minutes. It didnt' matter how many times I asked what was wrong, they wouldn't answer me, until I started to get really agitated and my vitals signs really got out of whack. Then they finally told us that Olivia didn't breathe on her own when she first got out, so they were monitoring her and she had to stay under a heat lamp to make sure her lungs were good. We have long since found out that there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with her lungs.

Everything ended up being just fine and I came home the next day with my beautiful baby girl, and that is where the fun really began as I had a newborn in the house, a toddler who had just learned to walk and I was recovering from surgery......I ended up having a migraine for three months after she was born (which turned out to be a bad sinus infection) and half my face was paralyzed from something called a Bell's Palsy as I caught an infection from the epidural.