Oliver Hudson is opening up about a day in his life “that I do not want to relive.”
The 48-year-old “Happy Gilmore 2” actor, the son of Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson, reflected on his traumatic birth and its possible lasting consequences in the Aug. 11 episode of his “Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson” podcast.
Right before he was born in September 1976, Oliver Hudson ate his fecal matter “and almost died.”
“I meconium aspirated. For those of you who don’t know what that is, we are fed through an umbilical cord in utero. And you’ve gotta take a dump, and that’s exactly what I did,” Hudson explained. “Of course, that’s what we breathe when we’re little. And boom, in it goes, deep into my lungs.”
“I came out: ‘Oh my God, it’s a boy!’ because Mom didn’t know. And boom, I was rushed off into NICU. I was there for three weeks or a month,” Hudson shared. “But I made it.”
“Has this (messed) me up since the beginning?” Hudson mused. “My birth could be the root of all my problems, which is weird.”
Hawn, 79, previously emotionally recounted her firstborn’s birth in a 2021 episode of the “Sibling Revelry” podcast.
She had to undergo an emergency cesarean section, she told Hudson, and it didn’t take long for her to realize something was not right.
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“I heard you cough. … Something seemed wrong to me,” Hawn explained. “And I said, ‘Is that cough OK?’ And they went, ‘Oh yeah, it’s normal; we’re just suctioning him.'”
The nurses swaddled up the 11-pound Oliver and put him “right near me,” Hawn said. “I looked in your face and I said, ‘I waited so long for you.’ And they whisked you away.”
Oliver Hudson had ‘a 40% chance of living’ after his birth
While Hawn was being sewn up, she heard medical staff discussing a baby in the NICU.
“I said, ‘Is that my baby you’re talking about?’ And the doctor said, ‘Just give her something and put her out,'” she recounted. “It was terrible.”
When she woke up in the recovery room, she “learned my baby might die,” Hawn said, revealing she was told Hudson “had a 40% chance of living.”
But the doctor, who was “really upset,” told her Oliver is “going to make it.”
Hawn was given “a lot of penicillin” due to the meconium aspiration, and on the second day of her hospitalization, was allowed to meet her newborn in the NICU for the first time since their initial moments together.
“I was so afraid of what would happen if I saw you again and fall in love with you and you would die,” she told Hudson. “You were absolutely gorgeous. … but you also had a low heart rate, which wasn’t great.”
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The “Overboard” actress, who described herself as spiritual, was drawn to take action for her ailing son.
“I stood up and I put my hand over your chest while (the ventilator) was breathing for you, and … it’s almost as if I made my body and my mind hollow,” Hawn said. “That’s when I asked God to heal my son through me. To use me as your instrument.”
She continued, “And I started looking at your heart monitor and it was starting to get higher.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Goldie Hawn’s son Oliver Hudson ‘almost died’ after he was born
