Happy 1st Birthday Elaina!!

Me about 4 AM waiting for my baby

Same time, Manny waiting...wouldn't it be nice to be a guy and have the ability to sleep through everything? ;)

Here she is!!! Her first cries were music to my ears!

Amazing to me how alert she was even the day she was born.

My 'snow white'

Proud big brother. He was a little aprehensive when he first met her but then warmed up to her and has latched on to her ever since. When he gets home Wednesday morning's now he goes straight to her crib to peak on her. He is adorable with her.

Love at first sight.

It's amazing how quickly a year can come and go. A year ago tonight about this time [midnight] I was hunched over in pain and had finally surrendered to Elaina's plans and told Manny IT WAS TIME TO GO. This baby was coming! She has other plans for her Mommy. Last August I craved PEACHES and Cafe Rio [spicy foods]. The feelings of discomfort in my own body are too imprinted in my memory to forget just after a year. Swollen feet, toes, legs, achy, tired back, a certain picture Manny took of my sad foot the weekend Amy moved in to her house is too vivid still in my mind to be forgotten already. Despite the discomfort, my favorite parts of being pregnant was towards the end. Lying on my back and watching my tummy roll in waves as I watched my little girl moving around inside me. Feeling the movements of her [although they became strong and sometimes painful] I was still in complete awe at the miracle growing inside me.

After a long hard week at work [12 hours shifts KILL when you're a pregnant CNA even if it's 2-3 shifts a week] combined with other activities during the weekend left me drained and exhausted. Although I didn't do much to help my sister move as I felt so sick and exhausted from the work week and getting things prepared and organized for her arrival...what I did do still left me feeling more fatigued. Labor Day I finally slept in until about 10:45 and got some rest. When I woke up I had all sorts of energy. "Nesting" had set in and I got a lot of stuff done and set out to run last minute errands. I remember after a few stops I stopped at Subway to get a sandwich because I needed to eat something but I didn't want anything too greasy. While I was eating my lunch [about 3:30] I just had an overwhelming sense of peace and happiness come over me. About that same time I also started having the beginning of labor pains. My next stop was Wal Mart to exchange some duplicate gifts for other little fillers we needed for her. Labor Day at Wal Mart was not the day to do exchanges. I waited in line at the service desk for over a half an hour. I remember I kept getting pains and it became more and more difficult to stand there let alone tolerate the annoying people around me. I finally made it through the line and back to the back of the store to get what I needed and decided I couldn't go anywhere else, that I just needed to lie down for a few minutes and all would be fine again. My contractions kept coming and were consistently 5-7 minutes apart and then would stop for a bit so I kept telling myself it wasn't the real deal and she wasn't coming. I remember about 8:00 at night my mom saying, "Manny. Would you please tell your wife that this baby is coming tonight. She isn't working tomorrow, she's having a baby." About 9:30 is when I started to time and keep good track of my contractions again as I decided I better start again just in case [9:00 they had slowed down for about an hour so I took 2 Tylenol PM so I could sleep before my shift]. For two hours they were right on schedule...I didn't want to go to the hospital and be sent home so I tracked them a longer than what my Dr. told me to be sure it was the real deal. A little before midnight when I experienced a very intense contraction I decided she WAS in fact coming and I better hit the road.

We got to the hospital and got checked in. When they checked me I was dilated to a 6. About 12:45 my water broke. I got my epidural shortly after and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way. Elaina and I had a deal that she would wait until September to be born and that she wouldn't come over Labor Day weekend because Marcus would be out of town to a reunion with his Mom. I also didn't want her to come over the weekend because Amy was moving and needed man power to get moved out of her apartment. I wanted to work one more week but she listened to the most important request I made so I couldn't complain. I had one final last minute request - that she wait until Dr. Terry got there to be born.

It was a surprisingly short night considering. I fell asleep for about 5 minutes then the nurse came in to check me and I was awake the rest of the time. I kept thinking about what she was doing prior to being born. I kept thinking about what she would look like. What Marcus would do when he saw her. I was too stoked to sleep. I just sat in my delivery room, Manny asleep at my side on the couch, my mom sitting in front of me on a chair who FINALLY decided to get a couple minutes of sleep for the big moment and I thought of every last little thing I could. Modern medicine is a beautiful thing. Since I got the epidural, I didn't feel a thing until it wore off which made the rest of the delivery a very pleasant, beautiful, experience as neither I or Elaina had any complications.

Right at shift change I was dilated to a 10 and 100% effaced. They were getting things set up and I was getting nervous as my Dr. wasn't in the room yet. About 7:15 I think it was, he came in was gowned and ready to go in no time. It was the moment of truth. I don't remember it taking very long to get her out, 5-7 pushes and she was here at 7:34 AM. I remember waiting breathlessly to hear that first breath and cry... and nothing. As I watched my baby and Dr. Terry he was tickling her feet and stroking her and finally gave her bum a swat and out it came as did my first breath after she was born. I was a Mommy. My little girl had safely made it here and her first sad, scared cries were music to my ears. I couldn't believe the shear perfection I saw right before me. "2 pounds of hair," beautiful skin, perfect 10 toes and fingers, the cutest round little cheeks. I could finally let a few tears fall in absolute joy and happiness as I looked around this perfect scene and saw my husband beaming with joy and pride and my own Mother there to be with me on this special day for me, listening to her tell me all about her first big stories I anxiously awaited a closer look. I reached my trembling arms to receive my little bonita. I fell in love 10 times over and over, again and again. As they took her away I felt empty and alone and ached to hold and smell and kiss her. While they took care of her we called her new big brother to tell him the news. He wasn't too sure about it. When he first met her - he wasn't too sure about her but shortly after he was all big brother and couldn't get enough of her.