Owen's Birth Story

Owen Daniel Treiber. My second born, first born son. You came on the scene during a crazy time in our lives, full of transition. You walked the stage with Mommy at the end of May 2012 when I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, you were tucked away still growing in my belly as I received my diploma.  Shortly after that, June 1 to be exact, we moved from Austin to McKinney.  I quickly found a doctor and set up a nursery in our new home because you were expected to come in just a few short weeks.  Selah and I enjoyed exploring our new area while we waited for you to arrive. We went to the library, church, stores and when we weren’t running around we were trying to empty moving boxes and organize our new home and NAP, a lot of napping.  I spent the evenings watching Parenthood while sewing a carseat cover blanket for you. 

Then, on June 20^th, at 4:00 in the morning, I felt my first real contraction.  I woke up Daddy at around 6:30 after my 3^rd or 4^th contraction to tell him I was pretty sure something was happening here even though it was 11 days before your due date.  Since I couldn’t sleep I went downstairs to finish up the blanket…juuuuust in case. Daniel came down only a few minutes later so full of excited, anxious energy, he started singing songs (Daniel style, all original!) and getting last minute things ready in case we needed to head to the hospital at any minute. Shortly after that Selah woke up and was ready to get her day started with breakfast.  It was soooo hard to keep a balance between exploding with excitement and keeping it cool to take care of Selah and go through our normal routine. Daniel originally intended to take the day off, thinking and hoping baby Owen would be arriving soon, but as the morning went on my contractions completely stopped. In fact, from the time I got out of bed at 6:30 I didn’t have one! So by like 8:30/9 daddy decided he’d try to get some work in and I could just keep him updated throughout the day. So time basically crawled by at a snails pace and I tried SO hard to focus on keeping the day normal but all I could think about was whether I was having a contraction. I was supposed to have a friend’s little girl over that morning, but I called my friend and told her what I thought was happening, and considering I had been awake since 4:30 it was probably best I rested as much as possible. I ended up setting up a pool in the backyard for Selah to play, then I gave her lunch, a bath, and then settled her in for a nap so I could lay down and nap. 

I was starting to feel pretty silly and a little disappointed because I had only had one, maybe two contractions since those early morning ones. But, once I tried to lay down and nap I would feel a contraction every 15 minutes or so. Once I sat up or stood up they were gone. Weird. And annoying, because at this point I’m thinking they aren’t real contractions and it is just preventing me from getting some much needed rest. Well, during this nap my mom’s flight had landed so Daniel went to the airport to pick her up. The initial plan was for me to pick her up, or for all three of us to go, but we figured that if there was any slight chance of contractions picking up it would be better for me to be home rather than in traffic half an hour from the hospital. Daniel made sure Corey and Malinda were available if I needed them to drive me to the hospital and take care of Selah if things happened to pick up quickly. It was a long hour, but Daniel finally got back home with my mom!! Having my mom with us sure helped keep my mind on other things, like showing her around our new house and having her help with last minute cleaning and organizing. Selah was thrilled to have grandma around too! Daniel took the rest of the afternoon off and we all went to the grocery store to pick up some groceries for the next couple days. We went ahead and invited Corey and Malinda over for dinner. Daniel grilled hamburgers and we boiled some fresh corn on the cob (Selah helped shuck the corn with Auntie Malinda) and steamed some yummy veggies and baked French fries. Then, for dessert, we all headed over to a snowcone truck for snowcones. All during this time, from the grocery shopping to eating snowcones, my contractions picked up to every 10-30 minutes…I was definitely getting pretty excited!!! We would be going about the activities and then all of a sudden I’d have to catch my breath, stop and hunch a bit, and focus on breathing until the pain passed, everyone would take a moment to look my way and give a questioning look, and I’d get to smile and quickly nod my head. 

After snowcones we picked up a rental movie, Dolphin Tale, to keep the evening going. I only made it a quarter of the way through the movie when the contractions were getting too frequent and too intense to watch so I went upstairs to our new big tub and ran a warm bubble bath to relax through the contractions a bit. At about 10pm contractions were coming on strong and frequent so I called my doctor to get the go ahead to go to the hospital, which I did. So I packed up last minute items in the hospital bag, made sure my mom’s bed was made up and ready for her to sleep in since she would be with Selah in the morning (talk about perfect timing for her to get into town!!!), and while Daniel helped me with this task I remember looking at him and saying, “This is it, are you ready? No more sleep for a while.” to which he replied, “I don’t really think we have a choice. But yes, I’m as ready.” We were becoming a family of four, and we had already done this once before so we knew the work, the hard, hard work, that went into this whole keeping a baby alive thing…but we were ready, and excited! 

Then Daniel and I made our way to the hospital, which happened to be the same time we headed to the hospital when Selah was on her way also! For some reason, you Treiber babies like to come in the middle of the night haha! We had to wait about 5 minutes to be taken back to the triage room, which was a much better experience than the one I had with Selah, they quickly asked me questions, I signed the papers, and was checked and confirmed as in labor. I got as comfortable as one can get while in labor in an L&D room, Daddy always by my side, and waiting for my epidural. I had an ahhhhhmazing experience with getting an epidural this time around, it was an older gentleman who you could tell loved his job and was good at it. He was kind and patient. He put me at ease by answering all my questions and talking me through everything he was doing. Unfortunately, the epidural only helped dull the pain, but I felt every single contraction, so trying to rest through that night was a bit rough. At around 6AM I knew it was time to push and get you out into this world, but my doctor was in an emergency situation at another hospital and wouldn’t be able to make it for another hour or so, so they gave me some sort of medicine that basically paused my labor. So for an hour I laid on my side concentrating really hard on breathing and trying to ignore the feeling to push…it was a long hour! Finally, finally, finally my doctor made her way through the door. She was so super sweet and perky and excited to start her morning by bringing a baby into the world, it was such a relief to see her! As soon as everyone was set up, I pushed a couple times and BAM, you were born!! That easy!!! I pushed for two hours with Selah but 10 minutes later and Owen Daniel Treiber took his first breath of life at 7:15AM on June 21, 2012. 

I got to hold you and stare at you and love on you a bit before they wisked you away to be cleaned and weighed and measured and all that good stuff. Not too much later Grandma Susie and Auntie Malinda and Selah came into the room to meet you. 

You were such a calm little guy (in the beginning at least ;), and you would just let your eyes wander around your new surroundings, taking it all in. After a long wait in the L&D room, super uncomfortable, a recovery room finally opened up and the bed felt like a big, fluffy cloud right from heaven compared to that harder L&D bed. It turned out the timing was just perfect though and worth the wait because we ended up in this special, big room (no idea why, but I didn’t ask questions), and there was plenty of room for visitors. It was pretty much like a hotel room. Daddy stayed with me the first night and my mom stayed the second night and there was a curtain to divide the room from the couch/bed so daddy and grandma could sleep somewhat undisturbed unless I really needed them to help with something. Selah stayed at the house during the night but would come to visit periodically during the day. We ate cake and ice cream and watched some cartoons and took turns holding our new precious baby.

We love you Mr. O and we couldn’t be more thankful that God brought you into our lives!!