Introducing...

Eliana!

(Once I get home, I'll post a picture. The hospital's network is not letting me post pictures here or in email. All I can do is Facebook.)

(edited to add picture)

Here is the looong birth story:

Early Wednesday morning, I started having contractions. From 4am to 7am, they came every 8 to 10 minutes. All day Wednesday I was really uncomfortable with sporadic contractions, back pain, and just general crampiness. I dropped the boys off at my mom's house at night, and went home to do the final preparations. Marcelo and I ended up watching American Idol and going to bed waaay too late. I was so ridiculously nervous about my surgery and couldn't get my body to shut down. I ended up getting 3 hours of sleep.

On Thursday morning, we got up and ready to go to the hospital. We took one final picture of my pregnant belly and were out of the house by 5am. When we got to the hospital at 5:30, my first order of business was to demand a different anesthesiologist from last time. Luckily, the guy I had last time no longer works there, and the nurses all said they'd make sure I got a good one. I got started on my IV and Marcelo and I sat in a room until 7:45, which is when my doctor finally arrived. I can't describe what a nervous wreck I was!

I got wheeled into the OR around 7:50. They prepped me for my spinal, and the best nurse ever, Ann, helped me stay calm while they did it. It wasn't bad at all. I was hyper-aware of every little feeling because I was sooo scared that the anesthesia wasn't going to work like the last time. But then, I started feeling overly numb. Even my arms and hands were feeling tingly, so I started to panic that I had gotten too much anesthesia. On the verge of a panic attack, I took deep breaths and waited for Marcelo to get there. Once he was holding my hand, I was able to calm the heck down. My wonderful doctor had already gotten started and I didn't feel a thing. I took a big giant sigh of relief. It took a loooooong time to get through all my scar tissue. It was pretty unnerving. Dr. B commented on the insane amount of scar tissue I had. Marcelo was watching everything, so I looked up at him and said, "Are you sure you're going to be okay watching?" (You know, because of the little "near fainting" incident with Celo's eyebrow.) Marcelo said he was fine, but then a few minutes later, he was like, "I'm feeling a little weird." The nurses took it really seriously and whisked him away. They made him sit a few feet back and got him a cold wet rag. He was totally fine, but they've seen too many men keel over, so they didn't take it lightly. I knew he was fine, so I just teased him about getting full permission to make fun of him later. He was like, "We can't have that!" And finally came back to hold my hand.

At 8:16am, Eliana entered the world. The first thing she did was pee all over the place. Marcelo said, "She has so much hair!!" They cleaned her up and Marcelo brought her to me. I got to see her for a second and they took her away. I hate that part.

As they sewed me up, Dr. B talked to me about my scar and my uterus. He said that my wall was really thin, and that he was really happy that we did the c-section a week earlier than usual because if I had gone into labor and had some strong contractions, I would have been at high risk for rupturing. Scary!

Since they numbed me so well, I was in the recovery room for an hour and a half, and my legs still didn't wake up. The nurse was in kind of a rush, so she took me into my room anyway, even though I still couldn't bend my knees. This made it very difficult to move onto the bed, and I ended up straining my stomach muscles a bit. Lame. I didn't get to see Eliana until 2 hours after she had been born. When I finally saw her and held her, I just cried and cried. Well, first I laughed at the fact that she had ridiculous amounts of hair and looked Asian, and then I cried. I usually cry in the OR, but it all happened so fast this time and didn't hit me until I was holding her.

Her stats were so surprising! All 3 kids have been 19.5 inches. Diego weighed 6 pounds even, and Celo weighed 5 lbs 13 oz. Eliana is our biggest at 6 pounds 7 and a half oz! That's tiny for many people, but to me it's big! I was shocked. I had bought 2 preemie outfits for her because the boys wore preemie clothes out of the hospital. But the preemie clothes are too small for her so we donated them to the hospital.

She doesn't look at all like I imagined or like she looked in the dreams I had of her. The only thing I guessed right on was her black hair. But it still suprised me to see how jet black it is! And I had no idea there would be so much of it. Her nose and chin look just like mine in my baby pictures. But she's changing by the minute. Marcelo and I are cracking up at how Asian she looks. Her jet black hair is stick straight and looks like it gets longer by the hour.

With all the nurse interruptions, this has taken me forever to write! There's much more to say because my recovery isn't going as well as planned, but I'll have to write the rest later.