Good Golly, It’s Olly!

Good Golly, It’s Olly!

Oliver James Bindernagel arrived on August 3rd at 3:40 a.m. 7 pounds, 5 ounces and 20 inches long. We call him Olly!

I was induced at 39 weeks because an ultrasound showed that there was too much amniotic fluid, which can be dangerous if water breaks at home, and the baby was registering at 8 pounds, 8 ounces, which is a big baby for my little body. Obviously they were completely wrong about his size because he’s just a little guy!

Andy and I checked into the hospital on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. to begin induction. We’d been through induction before with our first baby, Joanna, so we knew to expect a long, boring process (with Joey we checked in on a Saturday evening and she was born Monday morning, ugh). This time I knew to pack lots of magazines.

Since I wasn’t dilated at all to start, they gave me three rounds of Cytotek four hours apart, which is a suppository used to soften the cervix and make you ready to be induced. But then my water actually broke on its own Wednesday evening. I was taking a nap and woke up to a huge contraction, like someone kicked me as hard as they could in the stomach, followed by gushing. Honestly, I thought maybe I’d peed my pants! Then my contractions started to get really intense really quickly. Since my labor started on its own, they didn’t need to give me any Pitocin, the medicine that’s used to induce labor.

After getting an epidural, I pushed for about 45 minutes before Olly was born. With Joey, I didn’t feel a thing during the entire labor process, which was awesome, but this time, despite an epidural, I felt everything, and it was NOT awesome. BUT, my recovery has been way, way better — I feel almost completely normal — so in the long run, it worked out. AND Olly is a beautiful, healthy baby boy with the skinniest little legs and big feet who we just could not be more thrilled to have in our family!

Joey is doing great as a big sister. She loves to rock him and is always happy to see him, but mostly she just goes about her day like nothing has changed, which is pretty perfect. She turned 19 months the day after Olly was born, and I think the benefit of them being so close in age is that she’s too young to be jealous. The hard part for me is that I’m not allowed to pick up anything heavier than 10-15 pounds for two weeks, which makes me so sad not to be able to put her to bed or grab her for a big hug. Having Andy home for a whole month is going to be wonderful. Maybe we’ll even get some house projects done!

So all in all, we’re home, we’re happy, we’re healthy, and our family is complete. It’s very, very good.