The Olivia Chronicles: Olivia is here!

In my last blog, I told you that I was scheduled to have an "augmented" labor Monday, August 16th. Our doc said we'd have a baby by the evening. Apparently, our little one got the memo and decided to start the party a little early. Around 3am that day, I was already having contractions 5 minutes apart and growing more and more intense. By the time we checked in to the hospital at 6:45am, things were progressing pretty quickly. My water broke at 7:20am and we started pushing around 11:30am. In between contractions, Tony was looking up places to get lunch once she arrived. At about that time, Olivia's heart rate started rising and dropping dramatically and our doctor ordered an emergency C-section. Tony and I were both disappointed, but didn't have much time to grieve over the change in plans. Within about 10 minutes, we had our little girl. Olivia Joleen arrived at 12:30pm weighing 7 pounds, 13 ounces and measuring 20 inches long. She has lots of dark hair, just as we suspected she would. She had a little trouble breathing and spent the next 3 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. We finally got to have her in our room on Thursday and we all went home on Friday. She's been around for a month now and it's been amazing. Parenting is not without its challenges, but overall, it is spectacular to know that we created this little person and get to watch her grow and change everyday.

Olivia's had many many visitors. She's met all of her grandparents, the Masters, the Hawthornes, aunt Colleen, great aunt Betty (all the way from Missouri) and lots of our friends. Aunt Colleen moved to California the weekend before Olivia was born and has been visiting and helping us out regularly. She is great! My mom and dad just spent 8 days here helping us out and hanging out with Olivia. We did lots of fun things with them. We had a BabyQ (backyard bbq with family and friends), took the train downtown to have lunch with Tony, went bowling, drove to Malibu and just chilled.

Olivia pretty much sleeps 6 hours at night now and that means I too sleep about 6 hours at night. We go for walks to the bank, the grocery store, around the neighborhood, etc. Olivia likes to ride in her stroller and also likes to be in the car. She loves her bouncy seat and listening to music and our voices. She doesn't love bath time yet, but we're hoping that will change. To us, she is the greatest thing in the world and we're so happy to have her here with us, finally.