Morris baby #4 has arrived

She's finally here!!!! Our sweet baby girl made her grand entrance into this world on Monday, June 7, 2010 at 2:20 in the afternoon weighing 6lb. 4 oz. and measuring 19 inches long. She is absolutely beautiful and looks a lot like her big sister, Katelyn.
With this being our fourth baby, I wanted to do things different and chose to have a home birth with a midwife and to have a water birth using a birthing tub. I'm not sure why I chose to go this route, I just felt very strongly about having a natural birth. I had heard of other ladies giving birth in a birthing tub and saying how wonderful it was and how it was so relaxing and took the edge off the pain. I was optimistic and wanted to try it. So I did.
I will admit it was a little more work to get ready for this birth than just going to the hospital to deliver because they already have everything there ready for you....they just charge you up the wahzoo for all of it. Anyway, we had to gather all the "birthing" day supplies and have them all ready and towels and baby clothes sterilized.
I had been having some pre-labor for a few days before that would have us up way before dawn timing contractions, wondering if that was the day we were having our baby.....unfortunately by about 7 a.m. each time my contractions would die down and we would go about our day without much of anything else happening. Again, Monday morning we were up again at 2 in the morning timing contractions. This time we called our midwife and asked her to come over. So she did and we waited. We got our birthing tub out and filled with water and I even got in it for awhile....until, inevitably my contractions died down again. Very frustrating!!! So I got out of the tub, and we just rested and waited for them to pick back up. around 10 a.m. my midwife went back home to do some things and Jeff and I went for a walk to get a snow cone with a gal that is in training to be a doula (labor coach) that we had invited to help us at our birth. We got back around noon and tried to rest (yeah right). My contractions had started picking back up and were getting a bit more painful so we called the midwife again around 1 o'clock, we filled the tub back up. I was ready to get back in because I wasn't getting much of a break between contractions (maybe 20 seconds). My midwife showed up about 1:45 and started setting things up. By this time I was well into the transition stage of labor and was really struggling to stay calm and relaxed. I just remember my doula telling me with contractions to tap my fingers on my leg to keep me from getting too tense ( good distraction). At 2:18 my midwife checked me and said I was only dilated to 8 cm. and asked if I wanted my water broken. I told her yes and she did. I then got into a kneeling position and had another huge contraction and was pushing my baby out. Oh my gosh!!!!! was all I was thinking at this point. I don't know about you other ladies that have had natural births but this really hurt!!!
Well, she came really fast. The only complication we had was that her cord was 11 inches long and broke on her way out. We got it clamped off, but we were concerned that she might have lost a bit of blood because of it. After we got all cleaned up though we thought it was best to take her into the hospital to have some blood work done to check and make sure that she was okay. After having to go back almost everyday to have a heal poke, newborn screening, immunizations, or biliruben check, hopefully almost done. Olivia's white blood cell and red blood cell count have stabilized and doing well. We had to have her be under a special blue light portable bed for a few days because she was in the high risk zone for jaundice and are hoping that those levels stabilize soon. It's been quite a week and she's been such a trooper through all of this. She is so sweet and we are so grateful to have her here and to be able to rely on and have the power of the priesthood in our home in time of need. My other kiddos also think that Olivia is pretty great. Even Sarah is adjusting well to her.