Olivia's Birthday

Olivia Caroline Baker was born July 15, 2009, about a week and a half before our July 26 due date.  She weighed in at 6 lbs 13.8 oz and was 19.75 in long.  We went in to see Dr. Collins for our appointment at 8 a.m., and she was downstairs delivering her second baby of the day already!  When she got back to check "under the hood", I was already about 5 cm dilated, and having contractions that she could feel on my stomach, but I honestly didn't notice.  She sent us upstairs to L&D to get ready.  Delivery was so much better than I'd imagined--yay for epidurals!  My mom actually took a photo of Colin, me, our doctor and nurse, all in and around the labor bed, and I'm legitimately smiling between pushes--but I'll spare everyone the actual shot!  It was a crazy day at the hospital, and Olivia was Dr. Collins's FIFTH baby of the day!  (I'm sure she was by far the best looking, though!)  Dr. Collins was literally yanked by another nurse into a room next door after my first two pushes to deliver a baby who obviously felt a much greater rush to arrive than Olivia did.  Within 20 minutes we resumed pushing, and Olivia was born probably a couple of hours later at 5:47 p.m.  For some odd reason, my contractions spaced out after we started pushing, so there was a lot of down time in between pushes.  I've been watching a lot of episodes of "16 and Pregnant" on MTV and "A Baby Story" on TLC, so we filled the time discussing some of the more awesome stories I've seen recently--and by awesome I mean disgusting, painful and/or ridiculous.  Olivia's cord was around her neck, which Dr. Collins expected and warned us about based on her heartbeat patterns.  This leads me to a couple of funny delivery stories: 

1.  My one and only freak out of the day--I had just gotten my epidural, was feeling no pain, and the nurse left the room to get some supplies.  (This was prior to our previously mentioned cord discussion with the doctor.)  I asked Colin to get me a popsicle from the patient snack room down the hall, so it was the only time I was alone in this room all day.  Not 30 seconds after they left, I could hear a sudden and notable slowdown of her heartbeat that was playing loudly on the monitor next to me.  I panicked--You always hear about sudden heartbeat drops leading to emergency c-sections--and I was alone, had NO IDEA how to page a nurse, and couldn't feel my legs, so I definitely wasn't going anywhere.  I decided yelling was my only option.  I started saying in a really loud voice "HELLO?!  SOMEONE?!  HELLO?!"  Within a minute or so, Colin and the nurse walked in together laughing, saying "Was that you in here yelling?"  The nurse at the desk asked if we could hear someone yelling and as we got closer, we realized it was you."  Now, you can imagine that I didn't find this funny at all.  They assured me that they were watching the monitors at the nurse's station...her heart rate was already back up, and as long as it didn't stay low after each contraction, everything was okay.  I'd be surprised if they couldn't also see my heart rate had simultaneously skyrocketed!
2. With the urgency of getting her cord cut and removed immediately, Colin was off the hook.  Although, he must have somehow missed our previous discussion of that whole cord/neck issue (probably too busy stressing about the thought of having to cut it) and sort of sighed, visibly "sucked it up" and asked where she needed him to move to get to the cord.  We were all like, "Ummm, it's done."  I thought that was pretty entertaining.