Welcome to Olivia Nicole Mounier!
She arrived a couple of weeks early on the 17th. Looks like we'll get some mileage out of the Halloween onesies we've collected over the past few months.
Here's a recap of the day's timeline...
Around 3am Sara's waters broke. The waters kept on breaking until a brief reprieve at around 4:30. We took that as the cue to drive off to the hospital. The 3am wake up call was a little confusing for both of us. We were caught off guard with this all happening so far away from the 31st due date. In fact, on the 16th Sara had a doc appointment where they confirmed she was a Zero dilation. Anyway... so there we are at 3am asking eachother "should we go to the hospital?" The travel bag was only half complete at this time, so we gathered what we thought we'd need: One tooth brush (for both of us), one pair extra clothes each, camera, massage tool, one slightly musty flannel shirt for me... I know... what?... (it came in handy while sleeping on the foldout chair-bed).
5am... check in to triage at the hospital. Sara peed in the cup, hopped into the gown she would be wearing for the next 48 hours, and bingo... 1 centimeter on the dilation ruler.
7:00am... settle into delivery room 315. Strapped into the contraction-meter and the baby heart monitor... everything seems to be moving right along. But don't get your hopes up... this is your first baby and you could be here for quite a while. 20 hours is a drop in the bucket for first timers...
The rest of the morning was spent getting to know the rhythms of Sara's contracting uterus and our delivery nurse Suzanne. We learned her youngest daughter is named Olivia... oooo, foreshadowing...
Meanwhile, it was a busy morning for our pod of delivery rooms. A la the TV show "Friends" we saw about 3 other moms-to-be roll through our 4-room unit right off the street, purse still clutched, and deliver. Must not have been their first time. As for us... we are doing it by the book... we took the class, dammit... we are going to get our money's worth out of this childbirth. We want the experience of this natural thing called labor.
Ahhh, those early stages of labor. There we were laughing and enjoying this new experience in the hospital. Those were some great hours. But, then came the transition part of the labor. This is usually the part in the movie where a panicked dude yells at someone to go get some towels and hot water... the part when the beads of sweat start to form on mom's forehead and the brow begins to furrow. This was the part where we pressed pause and called in Suzanne for the epidural application.
Jumpcut to around 1:30pm. Dr. Goodtimes rolls in with his mobile epi-cocktail bar. Sara sits up in the bed. Suzanne stabilizes Sara from the front. Scott is asked to take a chair in front of Sara. Doc Goodtimes stands behind Sara and whips out a sizeable needle and begins what will end Sara's active labor pains. Delicately he literally threads the needle into her back where this amazing pain relieving juice will deliver her away from the pain so that she may focus on the delivery of her baby... who has prompted a 5cm dilation by this time...
2:30pm... this is when we commence with the Bill Cosby delivery scenario... the breathing, the pushing, Johnny Bench. It didn't take long and Johnny had it all under control.
4:09pm... Olivia is out. 7 pounds, 7 ounces. 20.25 inches. About 13 hours from start to finish we had a very textbook delivery...
We had our first Happy Holidays with Olivia and now we are going into hibernation.
