Julie Bowen says she’s ‘grateful’ for a healthy baby

During childbirth, even five tiny seconds of uncertainty can change your perspective for a lifetime.  When she delivered her son Oliver McLanahan, turning 8-months-old next week, actress Julie Bowen heard the sound that no parent ever wants to hear in the delivery room — silence.  Fortunately, Oliver was fine!  But those initial moments were scary enough to stay with Julie, who says that as a result she will never take Oliver’s good health for granted.  His birth story, as told to the Every Baby Has A Story campaign, is below. 

It was actually really exciting because I was at work on Boston Legal pretending to be in labor and all of a sudden my water broke … after all the screaming I guess Oliver decided that it was time to come out.  And we’re really lucky because the whole thing happened pretty quickly and progressed pretty well but when he came out, there was this moment of just silence, where nobody said anything. 

I couldn’t see him, I guess he was all blue…I kept screaming ‘What’s wrong with my baby?’  It was a very dramatic moment.  But of course there was nothing at all wrong with the baby.  They literally did the traditional ‘turn-him-upside-down-and-smack-him-on-the-butt’ and he started to cry and was absolutely fine.  Pink and happy!  And he showed an early proclivity for boobs and screaming.

And I’ve just been incredibly blessed and incredibly lucky that I had such a healthy, normal child right away.  Even that five seconds of fear made me realize how horrible it must be for women who experience problems in birth, premature babies and any other pregnancy scares.  So I’m really, really grateful for my experience.

Julie, 37, and her husband Scott Phillips have been married since 2004; Oliver is their first child. 

Every parent loves to share their birth story, and celebrities are no different.  The March of Dimes recently launched its ‘Every Baby Has A Story’ campaign, where you can also share your own baby story or read some of the 1,175 baby stories that have been posted. ‘Every Baby Has a Story” is a new grassroots and integrated media project celebrating babies, those born healthy as well as those who need help to survive and thrive, launched by the March of Dimes.