Olivia's Story

This will come in pieces.

We found out while we were on vacation in Maine that we were pregnant with Svatos Baby #3. We were thrilled. We talked about "the baby" with Emma all the time. The baby was referred to as "sister baby" by Emma, though the sex of the baby wasn't confirmed until July 8th.

I love being pregnant. I am fascinated with pregnant people in general. I have to try not to stare at pregnant bellies in public. When I'm pregnant myself, I track daily and weekly how big the baby is and what is newly functioning at every stage. New life is amazing to me. I love it.

Early on, my pregnancy was threatened. I was on bed rest for a few weeks and breathed a huge sigh of relief once I passed the 12 week mark, because the risk of miscarriage dropped significantly. We were ecstatic. We made it!

My pregnancy sailed along perfectly after that. I was in the apparent "2nd trimester bliss". I had energy, I didn't feel sick. And I was approaching the half way mark!

We went on vacation to our favorite place in the world, Kona, Hawaii. Bruce and I got married on the beach there and always planned to spend a lot of time there with our kids. We were so excited to bring our kids to the beach we got married at.

We arrived in Kona on Sunday, after a long weekend of traveling. Monday morning as we geared up for our first trip to the beach, I noticed that I was having a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions. At the time, I considered this completely normal, being my third pregnancy. As the day went on, while the kids were playing in the waves and building sand castles, I was timing contractions. As much as I tried to ignore them, they were still there. We got home to put the kids down for naps and I lied down on the couch and kept "complaining" about my contractions. They were consistently 3-5 minutes apart, and they were starting to get painful. I knew it was getting serious when I started to lose some of what I was sure was my mucous plug. I immediately called and spoke with the on-call doctor, who undoubtedly said none of this should be happening. I was to go to the nearest OB hospital.