Our story begins....

On this day Olivia was born. At 32 weeks it was quite a surprise! Here's the text of an email we sent to some friends and family after the "smoke cleared":


We would like to introduce you to Olivia Oaksford Hawley, born about 8 weeks early at 6:30 PM British Summer Time (like GMT with daylight saving), 22 October 2005. She was 3 pounds 13 ounces at birth, a beautiful little girl.

We had no clue she was coming. Saturday morning we were doing some 'home improvement' type projects in anticipation of the new arrival, and suzanne had some cramps but nothing to write home about when you're only at 32 weeks... We went out for a walk at 3:30 in the afternoon, and about 1/2 way through the walk the cramps had progressed to the point of being pretty strong contractions. we decided to go home and call the midwife to see what we should do, because of course this was too early for 'real' labor...

about halfway home the contractions were frequent and hard enough (we had to keep stopping so that Suzanne could stand up which helped ease the pain) that we decided "you know, the midwife is going to tell us to go into the hospital anyway, why don't we go straight there?" We did and it was a darn good thing! to make a long story short, labor was incredibly fast and Olivia was born at 6:30, 3 hours after we'd _set off_ on our walk in the woods. One intervention was employed, a 'Ventouse' which is sort of like a suction cup they put on the baby's head to pull her out.

Mom, Olivia, and Dad are going fine; Suzanne had no complications, bleeding, or any of that scary stuff. Olivia is doing all the right things so far, and had good breathing right from the start. since she's so small, she'll have to stay in the hospital for a while (she graduated from the neonatal Intensive care unit (NICU) to the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) today, which is great. we're working on fattening her up so she can come home! While Olivia is in the hospital, Suzanne will probably stay there as well, as long as there's a bed for her. She's in the "Sara" ward at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge. There may be a way to call her on a phone at some point, but we're not sure how that works yet... we'll send the details when we know.