I finally found the computer!

Okay, so I know it's been forever since I posted (February? I can't believe what a slacker I've been) but I owe y'all an update and we'll start with baby. This is Caleb Thatcher Olson, and we're lucky we have him. If you've already heard the birth story, feel free to scroll on down. On the morning of June 11th, I woke up at 5:30am feeling labor pains. I knew it was the real thing, but was expecting it to drag out until the afternoon like Katie's, so I picked up a book to read and started recording the times of the contractions. By about 7am I thought maybe this might happen sooner than I expected, since the pains were getting intense. I woke up Jared and called my Mom to come watch the kids. Unfortunately, my mom was out walking but my dad said he expected her any minute and would send her right over. No big deal, I thought. The contractions were not that close together. I decided that since we were waiting on my mom anyway, I might as well take a shower. OOPS. While I was sitting in a chair reading a book, the contractions were ten minutes apart, but after walking up the stairs to wake Jared then standing in the shower, I decided I had to go NOW. So I hurried out of the shower and into some clothes and called my parents again. I told my dad that he had to leave a note for mom and get here right away because the we were leaving. Lucky for me that my parents live practically up the street from me. We called the doctor's office on the way and warned him that this labor was progressing very fast (of course they didn't take us seriously, they never do.)

Anyway, so we finally get to the hospital and I can't even walk anymore, they're coming so fast. It was all dramatic like in the movies: Jared pulls up in front of the valet parking and hops out calling for a wheelchair. It was kind of funny in hindsight. So he gets me up to maternity and the nurse is calmly asking me to put on a gown and give a urine sample while I'm thinking -oh crap, I don't know if I can even stand up to take my clothes off! Well I managed it, but after I got on that little bed in the triage room, I wasn't moving again. The nurse started trying to put the little monitors on me and stuff, but then I think I started freaking her out (seriously, the contractions were right on top of each other) she just threw the straps back on the tray and went to get the charge nurse. The charge nurse comes in and checks me to find that I'm fully dilated and my bag of water is bulging. She said she needed to get me into a delivery room and I told her "fine, but I'm not getting off this bed!" They had to wheel me in there and take the bed that was in there out - it felt like it took forever. All this time they've been trying to get my doctor over - it was now after 8:00, so the on call doc told the hospital to call my regular doctor, who told them to call the on-call doctor back because he was driving his girls to camp and wouldn't be back until 9:00. I just wanted to murder both of them because my baby was COMING and they were arguing like kids over who has to do the dishes. The nurses were telling me not to push and so I wanted to murder them too. Anyway, after about 10 minutes, my water broke and I felt some relief until the nurse checked me and said "uh oh." Those are two syllables you never want to hear when in labor. She said that she felt hands and cord and I was ready to freak out, but luckily the doctor walked in right then and about ten seconds later they were wheeling me into the operating room.

Those who have experienced a planned C-Section will tell you how it's exciting and you get to enjoy the birth of your baby with no fatigue and no pain. Well, the emergency kind is not so exciting. There were about seven people handling my body at the same time - shaving, scrubbing, needle poking, oxygen masking, ultra-sounding, and who knows what else. It was madness. Doc was manning the ultrasound and I was nervous because I kept expecting to hear a baby heartbeat but didn't. I was put out a few seconds later though and woke up in a recovery room feeling nearly dead. If you've seen the pictures Jared sent around (without my permission, mind you), you probably noted that I looked almost dead too - and that was 3 hours after I woke up. This is getting long, so I'll finish with a truncated version of the rest: I had to get a blood transfusion as a result of an excessively bloody surgery, felt much better with some blood in my body even if it wasn't mine, got released and moved into my mom's house for 2 weeks where I lived in a recliner and let other people do nearly everything for me, then I moved back home (the recliner had to come with me) and I am now trying to get back into the rhythm of mommy life.

Now for a quick summary of some other things that have happened since February:
Jared and I each lost a grandparent this spring, which was sad. We did gain a sister though shortly thereafter (yay!) We look forward to getting to know Laura.
The boys were both in baseball (well, tee-ball for Braden). Braden loved it, Andrew started to get bored. I finally got released as Primary President, Hooray! What else . . . Oh-a big one- Andrew turned 8 in May, so he got baptized and got to join the cub scouts. Can you believe he's grown up so much? I feel old. Speaking of which, I turned 30 in June and Jared hit 33 last week. Katie's
3rd birthday is actually today, but we're not celebrating it until tomorrow since Jared had scouts tonight. Hopefully I can post some pics after the festivities, but I'm going to end this now or it'll go on forever.



She misses being the baby!