Random Factoids

The Story of My Name & Birth

(recently told to me- yes 24 years later- by my momma)

Ok, I know a few posts ago, I revealed the origin of my name, but there's a little extra back story that I think is fun. Just bear with it, ok? So being that I hear a lot of names, both odd and routine at my job, I asked my dear momma one day over our Christmas visit where they got the idea for my name. My momma, being a verbose woman (sorry mom, it's true.), told me a surprising story. Later, I prodded for a little more information about my delivery. I knew bits and pieces, but was again surprised by some interesting details. And by the way, I have always known my middle name, Marie, was in honor of my dad's Aunt Marie, who apparently played a big role in his life though I never met her. 

Anyway, here's the scoop:

My parents had decided early on to leave the sex of their baby a mystery (which we all know I love). My mom had an ultrasound somewhere during Master's week and the sonographer who happened to be a friend of hers, slipped up and told her I would be a girl. She still wanted it to be a surprise for my dad, so she never (even to this day- apparently) told him she knew. Sorry dad, I guess it's not going to drive any kind of animosity between you & mom considering you're divorced now. Awkward breakup talk aside, my mom started plugging lots of girl names. And being that it was Masters week, they settled on Hollie; named after the 18th hole but the "y" was replaced with an "ie" which matched my middle and last names resulting in years of playful torment. Not only because I always have to correct people's spelling of my name, but also because of the "ie" thing. 

Fast forward 2 months and my mom is in labor. I'm 2 weeks late at this point and she has an epidural. For some strange reason, each time they try to dose her epidural with the medicine that makes you numb, she passes out. No one can figure out why it happens with every dose (it happened again with Casey's delivery, so mom considers it some strange allergy), so they take out her epidural and allow her to continue laboring naturally. She makes it all the way to 10cm totally on her own. She said she was talking and laughing between her contractions and really surprising the staff with her tolerance. So her doc comes by and after what she calls "the longest cervical check of my life" which lasted "7 or 8 minutes" the doctor looks up and goes, "I've got it!" He proceeds to tell her that while she is 10cm, I have not even started to descend into her pelvis, which is probably the reason why she was tolerating her contractions so well. And the reason I wasnt descending?? Because both of my arms were over my head! That's right, my presenting part was an elbow. Obviously, a baby cannot be born with it's arms over it's head (and for the record, i've NEVER had a patient whose baby was in this position and it apparently happens in less than 1% of all deliveries), so my mom had a c-section. And because she couldn't tolerate an epidural, they had to put her to sleep. 

So there you have it. That's me in a nutshell... with my arms over my head.