We are so pleased, delighted, and excited to introduce you to the newest member of Team Oveson… Olivia Kathleen Oveson!
Wow! We are still a little shocked to have this sweet little girl come into our family after our wonderful “boy streak,” but we couldn’t be more thrilled! We’re absolutely in love! Olivia is just the sweetest, most beautiful and perfect little girl I could ever imagine! She’s an absolute angel, and we are all completely enamored with her! At only a couple days old, she already has all of us wrapped around her cute little finger – especially her Daddy! You can’t help but fall in love when you hold her! She’s just so precious! After Tee came to visit her, he said that as he held her his heart completely melted… I think we all feel the same way! She’s just amazing! Now on to the nitty gritty details…. And as a fair warning, this will probably be super long and way more info than anyone wants to read, but we want to record it for our sakes!
Olivia was born on January 10, 2012 at 7:59 a.m. She weighed 8 lbs 2 oz, and was 20 inches long… our biggest baby yet! But I guess she should be our biggest baby given the fact that she went two weeks longer gestationally than any of the boys! I was really excited to try and keep her in there until she was 39 weeks to see if it helped her transition her blood sugars better once she was out. And luckily Dr. Seale wanted to keep her in there as well! Though I was excited to see if the longer gestation helped once she was out, it made me a bit paranoid and anxious for the past couple weeks . I’ve been doing kick counts all day and night and holding my breath with anticipation, hoping that she was ok. I’ve never carried my babies this long due to the fact that we had too big of a risk of losing them at the end, and so I just couldn’t shake the fear of losing her. Luckily I had NST’s a couple times a week in addition to other appointments and ultrasounds to keep a really close eye on her at the end. And we made it to 39 weeks, and Aunt Liz’s birthday! We think it’s pretty special to share a birthday with Aunt Liz! Here she is with her birthday buddy!
The night before Olivia was born, Grandma Wittke slept over at our house with the boys so that Mike and I could leave bright and early… we had to be at the hospital at 5:30 a.m! I was worried all night and paying attention to every kick and movement, so I didn’t sleep very much and was actually relieved to be going so early! Apparently Olivia was determined that she was coming on the 10th one way or another, because on the way to the hospital I started contracting, and by the time I was being monitored there the contractions were consistently 4-5 minutes apart. After checking in and getting all prepped, we were excited and ready to go! We were really happy with the team of doctors and nurses we had this time. Dr. Seale was really good, and after having this surgery several times now, I can tell he’s a great surgeon. Things were “not great in there,” according to him, and both he and the nurses kept telling me what a difficult surgery it was. But he must have done a great job of it because it was so much easier for me than the last one. So I was pleased. And I have recovered a million times faster than last time – so that’s been nice! And I absolutely LOVED the anesthesiologist, Dr. Silver. He was great during the surgery, and I especially loved his “special brew” that he gave me after. It was by far the best pain control I’ve ever had. So he’s pretty much now my best friend! We also had, among the other nurses, a nursing student in there with us that was so excited and cute about it all. I think she was almost as excited as we were, since she was a new student and had never witnessed a birth or a surgery or anything before. After it was all over she just kept saying over and over how amazing that was, and how brave I was, and how I should never watch a c-section until I’m done having them because they are crazy! It was fun.
Anyway, the surgery took a little while to get past the mess I have going on in there and get to the baby, but pretty soon we were ready to get Olivia out! They first got her head out, but then she got a little stuck. While they kept working to get her out, all the nurses just kept saying, “Look at all that hair!” and “It’s got lots of hair!” It was so exciting to know she was almost here! Everyone in the operating room knew that we didn’t know whether it was a boy or a girl, and they were super excited to find out what it was too! So finally the moment we’d been waiting for came! They pulled Olivia out, and her back was towards us. I of course couldn’t see anything, but Mike says that moment they turned her around and he saw that she was a girl was just amazing! He was so emotional and so excited! It was awesome! So they brought her out, turned her around, and said, “OK, Dad, you get to call it!” And then Mike, in the sweetest emotional excited voice ever, said, “Oh my goodness, it’s a girl!” It was such an amazing moment! We were both fine having either a boy or a girl, but it was so exciting to have our first little girl! And it was so sweet to see how emotional and excited her Daddy was… she was his precious little girl from the moment she was born! From that moment through the next several hours he just kept saying, “Oh, she’s just so gorgeous,” and “She’s just so perfect,” and other such things, and it was clear that he was already completely in love with her. Of course, I felt the same things and loved her from the start too, but it was just sweet to watch Mike be so excited. It was amazing! Can’t you just see that emotion on his face?
Unfortunately, instead of basking in the moment very long, I quickly realized that she should be crying by now, and she wasn’t crying. And instead of lifting her up so I could see her, they quickly handed her over to the NICU nurses to start working on her. So I was a bit concerned, especially since I couldn’t see anything. I kept saying, “Why’s she not crying?” Mike and the anesthesiologist were both watching her for me, and kept assuring me that they were working on her, and Mike kept saying, “She’s not crying, but she is moving. She’s going to be fine.” It turns out that she had ingested the meconium that was in the amniotic fluid, and they ended up having to suction it out below the vocal chords, and so it took awhile before she could breathe. Her first apgar score was only a 2 – which is not good at all. Luckily she rallied well, and her 5 minute score was a 7, and her 10 minute score was a 9. So she ended up being fine in the long run, but those several minutes without her breathing, and not being able to see what was going on, was a little bit stressful for me. Luckily, she eventually started to cry, and then I could fully bask in the moment! Once she was stabilized and cleaned up a bit, they gave her to Mike and he was able to bring her over to show me. That’s got to be one of the very best moments in life… when you see your newborn baby for the first time! I feel so blessed to have had that moment four times! It was so amazing to see her – even if I couldn’t hold her yet! She was just perfect, and I felt so happy and so relieved that she was ok!
After that Mike went with her to the nursery while I laid there and got sewn up. He was pretty excited to pick out the first bow for her hair, and he of course picked purple for me, since it’s my favorite color!
Once I was back in the recovery room, Mike and Olivia joined me again, and I was able to finally hold her for the first time! I can’t even begin to describe the joy I felt as I held her! She was another little miracle for our family, and I felt so incredibly in awe and blessed to have her! She was just amazing and beautiful!
We hadn’t decided on a girl’s name before she was born, so we decided we had better figure out what to name this little girl! We had a list we liked, but we just weren’t sure. So we talked about it a little, but we were still uncertain. Mike later said when they first went to the nursery they were asking what her name was, and he explained that we didn’t have one yet. So they then asked what names were on our list, and the only one from the list that would come to his mind was Olivia. But I didn’t know that until later. After feeding and snuggling her in recovery for a minute, she and Mike were whisked away to get her blood sugar checked. While he was gone, I kept going over the names we liked in my head, and I just kept coming back to Olivia. When he came back I asked him what name he liked, and he said that he’d been trying all the names out on her while they had been in the nursery together, and that he thought Olivia fit the best. So, Olivia it was! And I think the name fits her perfectly!! Though we were uncertain about the first name, we did know that we wanted to use my mom’s name, Kathleen, as her middle name. We can’t imagine a better example of a woman to name her after! Here she is with her namesake!
Of course her blood sugar came back low, which was no surprise. But what was a pleasant surprise is that they let us keep her with us! They let us try for quite some time to get it up with formula instead of just instantly admitting her into the NICU. We actually had her in the room with us for 12 hours before they finally admitted her to the NICU since her sugars just wouldn’t stabilize. It was so wonderful to keep her with us and snuggle her and love her and enjoy her for the 12 hours before she got whisked away and placed in an isolette, hooked up to IV’s and monitors!
As soon as we were settled in our room, we called my mom and told her that she could bring the boys up. Since it’s flu/RSV season, no kids under the age of 14 were allowed in the hospital except in the lobby areas. So Grandma brought the boys up, and Mike went out to meet them in the waiting area. We had told the boys that we would not tell anyone what the baby was until they knew (despite all the texts Mike had to keep deflecting that morning). So he stayed there with the kids and a computer while my mom came up to my room. I then Skyped with the kids from my bed and was able to show them Olivia, and tell them it was a girl and all that good stuff. The boys were so excited! They had all wanted a sister, and we were thrilled to at least show them their sister via Skype. The wonders of modern technology!
Liz got there at about the same time, and both she and my mom were able to come in and see Olivia. Since we hadn’t been announcing what she was yet, neither of them knew what she was until they came into the hospital room and saw her. There was a lot of excitement and tears all around when they got to meet her! That day Uncle Mike and Uncle Tee were able to come and meet her before she got admitted to the NICU! Grandma and Grandpa Oveson made it up the next day, along with several other visitors over the next few days. We were grateful that Grandpa Wittke got there just after she was admitted, and then came back later to help us give her a blessing.
And boy did that blessing seem to work! Olivia was our little Wonder Woman when it came to her NICU stay! I think it was probably a combination of her being a girl, not being born until 39 weeks, and the fact that she has amazing appetite that helped her to progress so quickly! This little girl loves to eat! Unlike my boys who would rather sleep than eat, she will nurse and then down a bottle in no time flat! I think that really helped her blood sugars, so we were grateful for that. She was started on a sugar IV when she was admitted, and she was off that IV two days later! It took the boys anywhere from a week to a week and a half to do that! We were amazed! The nurses were continually amazed at how alert and active she was, and at her “record setting diapers!” She was born on the go and ready for life! After she’d been in there a day or a day and a half she had a fever, which inspired more blood work. At that time they found elevated CRP levels, which can mean an infection or inflammation. So she was also started on antibiotics. All three boys had the same lab results as well… which is interesting. Her levels kept going up for a day or so, and then started to drop. The midnight labs on Saturday morning showed that she had finally dropped below a 1 (which was where they wanted her), and so we were able to go home Saturday!! We were in awe! A four day NICU visit is something we’ve never had before! It was awesome! She was discharged the same day I was! That feels a bit miraculous to us! We’re grateful to have a wonderful NICU so close, and to also be out of that NICU!
As we left the hospital, that boys were finally able to meet Olivia in person! Once we got home they all spent time holding her and getting to know her. We’re so blessed to have these 4 wonderful kids! The boys have all adjusted to the changes of having a newborn wonderfully! I’m kind of amazed it’s all gone so smoothly!
Well that’s the story in a nutshell (a rather long nutshell)! I know this was quite the novel, but I just wanted to record all the details before I forget them! We’re so incredibly grateful to have been blessed with this sweet little girl in our family!!
