Olive's Birth Story

Olive was due July 25th and she was born Friday, the 13th. 

We had our maternity shoot the day before she was born and I knew something was up - things were funky... and a black baby kitty crossed our path as we were walking. 

Penelope woke me up at her normal time - 8:00am, wanting to nurse. Before she even started nursing, I had felt a small contraction. As she nursed, I felt a few stronger ones - so I only let her nurse for 10 minutes and shooed her off to breakfast. I got dressed and told Alan that I thought it was time. Since Penelope had come so fast, and I had measured at 6 cm dilated the week prior, I didn't want to wait around too long. We got all of our things together and got ready to go. On the way to South Coast Midwifery's birth center though, my contractions stopped. I called my midwife, Lori Walker, to see what I should do - she encouraged me to still come in so that she could check me. When Lori checked me, I was at 8 cm but hadn't had a contraction for over an hour.

I had a belly binder put on and hubby and I walked around the shopping center for an hour to get labor going, but no dice. Lori wanted to leak my waters, but I was getting hungry - so I told her to finish up her afternoon appointments so I could get lunch. After a nice meal, still no contractions - so Lori leaked my waters at 1:00pm. By 1:30, I still wasn't in labor - so we tried the breast pump. I went into labor at 2:00. 

I only had 3 hours of labor - and spent most of the time in the tub. I only had two pushes - I actually tried to get her out in the first push, but Lori asked me to stop and relax - Olive's head was out and we got to watch her naturally turn to allow her shoulders to pass easier on the 2nd push (coolest thing I have seen to date). And she was here.

During my entire labor, I had my ipod on random play. As things were heating up, Gin and Juice by The Gourds had come on and I remember thinking how much I REALLY did not want Olive to be born with that song playing... but just as she was crowning, "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen came on!

We stayed at the birth center for 3 hours before going home. Penelope was in bed already, so we let her sleep because we knew it would be hell trying to get her back down. During my pregnancy, Penelope had taken care of a teddy bear that my Aunt had gifted us for Olive. It was kept in Olive's bassinet, by our bed and Penelope would check on it every morning. She had quite the surprise that morning