My life is so crazy busy right now that I'm afraid that if I quickly don't write down what I do remember, I may totally forget it all. We introduced into our family another beautiful baby boy March 16th around 9:45pm. His name is Oliver Michael Bitton. He came into the world 11 days early at a whopping 9lbs. 4oz. To get to this point, I'm going to have to go back a few days.
We were anticipating the birth of Oliver and I was getting very uncomfortable. I was keeping very distracted with putting on the Relief Society Birthday Dinner as the Enrichment leader on the Tuesday before. My mom had even been in town as my dad had gone to a Las Vegas basketball tournament and we convinced her to come hang out here for a couple days. On that Wednesday before, she headed back home knowing that she would be back soon to help out when our baby came. Our week proceeded as normal and Saturday came rolling around.
As always our Saturdays are filled with lots of activities and Saturday chores. Jared had convinced me the night before that it would be fun to get the kids motivated to get all their jobs done quickly if we could tell them that we would take them for a little adventure down in San Diego that afternoon/evening. I wasn't really in the mood to be driving in the car for close to 2 hours considering how uncomfortable longer car rides had become, but Jared had been begging to go down there one more time before this baby came. I finally agreed as he had been working so hard to make things work.
We quickly got our jobs done and headed down to San Diego for the late afternoon and evening. It was a very uncomfortable drive and every bump and swerve seemed to be even more painful than usual, but I was always this uncomfortable at the end of my pregnancies. We first stopped in Old Town San Diego to take the kids to the Mormon Battalion as it had been a while since the last time we had been there. We went on the fun walking tour, had a blast panning for gold and getting to know the sweet sister missionaries serving there. By the time we pried the kids from the outdoor activities there, it was after 7:00pm. It was really late, but Jared really wanted to go down to Coronado to one of our favorite restaurants "Miguels". We had so many great memories as a family there, that we took the extra time to drive down there to eat our favorite chicken chimichangas and white cheese dipping sauce. It was really late and the kids were exhausted and fell right to sleep on the way home.
Around 4am Julia woke up with a bad stomach ache and threw up. Just what we needed - great - a sick kid! Luckily she was able to go back to sleep pretty easily and I got a halfway decent night sleep. Got up starting to think about getting ready for church. At this point in my pregnancy, my poor feet were so swollen that I couldn't hardly shove my toes into any of my shoes let alone church shoes, and honestly I was tired of people at church making comments about how I must be so uncomfortable. I quickly volunteered to stay home with Julia from church and take it easy. I got the other kids ready for church while Jared was at ward council that morning and started to have some uncomfortable contractions, but nothing consistent. When Jared came back from his meeting to take the other kids from church he noticed that I was having contractions. He was all too eager to have me go into labor and kept insisting that I time the contractions. I quickly shooed him out the door with the other kids to church and laid down on the couch. I was having some painful contractions, but didn't think too much about it. Jared kept texting me in church and wanted me to text him every time I had a contraction so that he could at least keep track of the time.
I was so convinced that I wasn't in labor and that everyone needed to just calm down. Jared gets himself a little too excited around this time every single baby we have had. Jared came home from church with the kids and I started feeling the kids some food. By this time when I was having contractions, I would have to stop what I was doing and hold onto something to get through. Jared was pressuring me to think seriously about at least getting checked out at the hospital. I was sure that I couldn't be going into labor this early. I had never had a this early and had only gone into labor on my own one other time. I had just had a sister in law that had gone into false labor a couple months earlier and had been sent home from the hospital. I just kept thinking that if I laid down, it would soon go away. Jared left to go do a quick home teaching visit and made me promise that I would go pack a hospital bag because as soon as he came back he was taking me to the hospital. I was in total denial. I called my mom to try to get her to back me up, but to my dismay she was insisting that I go to the hospital too! I felt like they were all ganging up on me!! I was in tears after hanging up the phone with her because all I could think was, "this isn't supposed to happen yet!! I'm not ready and no one is here to take care of the kids!"
A sweet member of our ward had offered to help in any way. I actually had to take her up on it this time. This was so not easy for me. I was always so self sufficient and my mom was supposed to be coming in a week to help take care of the kids because I was going to be induced. This was throwing a major curve ball in "my" plan. We left Julia in charge (with me still thinking that we would be back in a couple hours because this couldn't really be happening). We called our friend Lisa Voorhees who lives just around the corner and asked her if she could hang out with the kids until we came back. We drove to the hospital and as we were walking in, I had to stop to hold onto a tree because the pain was so bad. It dawned on me that this might just be the real thing. We checked into the ER and they soon wheeled me into Labor and Delivery to check me out. When Jared told the nurse that he almost had to drag me to the hospital, she laughed as soon as she checked on me because had I waited any longer, I would have been in trouble. I was already dilated to a 5! I almost couldn't believe it because just two days earlier, I had gone to a dr. appt and the dr. had said that I wasn't even dilated to a full 1 and was hesitant to induce me early. What a roller coaster of emotions!!
The contractions were very uncomfortable now and I quickly asked about having an epidural. They knew since this was my 5th baby, that I would probably go pretty fast and put in an order for the anesthesiologist. Everything at this point was almost a blur because it happened so fast. I signed paper work while they hooked me up with IVs and monitors. I got an epidural which made things so much better, and I never had any pitocin which is a first as my contractions were coming so quickly on their own. Within three hours of showing up at the hospital, I was at a 10 and they were ready for me to push. They brought the dr. in and asked me to push. With 1 push, that baby came right out! It was the fastest and easiest delivery I had ever had. It just seemed too easy and I hardly had any time to freak out about it. There I was holding my beautiful perfect little boy! He immediately latched on and started to nurse. To this day, he has been the easiest nurser of all my kids!
Oliver just turned 3 months old a couple days ago! He is the most calm natured and sweet baby! I had no idea when we picked the name Oliver that it would suit him so perfectly. I discovered after he was born that it means "peaceful". He fits that to a tee! He sleeps pretty much through the night and hardly ever complains. He just longs to be held and loves all the attention from his siblings. I honestly couldn't ask for a better baby!! Heavenly Father must be looking out for this busy mom because he sent a tender mercy to our home when he sent us Oliver. I feel so blessed to be his mother and we are all so in love!!!