baby baby i'm taken with the notion...to love you with the sweetest of devotions

Well it's that time. To tell about my baby story. Don't worry I will spare you some of the grosser details, cause frankly I'm not an over-sharer, and to be honest I had my eyes closed through most of it cause even I couldn't bare to see too much. Everyone kept saying that my crazy modesty issues would change once I had a baby, but I'm here to say...nope...nope they haven't. I still get way uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed even thinking about how many people have now seen WAY too much of my personal bizness. But anyway. Maybe in the future I will want to look back on this time and be reminded of the some of the details (although I'm pretty sure if I can still remember a dance I made up to Rockin Robin in the 5th grade I will still remember every detail of this little doozy of an experience...with or without the written documentation..but here it goes anyway.

I checked in to the hospital Sunday evening for an induction, since it was now 5 days since my due date, and miserable couldn't even describe my state. Around 7 they inserted some hormonal suppository that was to basically tell the cervix "hey! time to work here...now get to it". I sat in the hospital bed, hooked up to all sorts of machines, watching the amazing race and cold case) kim and emily came to entertain me, and just waited for something to start happening. into the later night around 9 or 10 I started feeling some contractions, which was a good sign but I still wasn't dilating much...which sucked. Around midnight they hit me with another suppository and this one apparently did it's job. all of the sudden the contractions, which until this point just felt like really painful menstrual cramps, turned into full blown stabs of pain that pretty much didn't quit. There came a point where I couldn't even sit still and just walked around my hospital room talking to myself and playing inner games of six degrees of separation...but nothing helped distract from the pain. They had given me a couple doses of pain meds, but they were complete child's play and didn't do much. Around 5am I was finally dilated to a 3 and they moved me into the birthing room and hooked me up with an epidural. Kim was there at this point, which was nice cause I used her hand to squeeze a couple times during the contractions of death until the epidural kicked in. Once that little shot from heaven kicked in I was good to go. We hung out in the birthing room sleeping and watching HGTV until about 10 and my body was finally ready to get this little bundle of joy out. The whole legs in the air, pushing until you can't breathe experience lasted about 37 minutes and Qiana Tamara Bates was born 10:37 am.

Kimmie cut the cord and the nurses and doctor cleaned off Qiana before they even set her near me (we had discussed how grossed out I was about the whole bodily fluids thing). Once they were done weighing her and doing all those medical things, I finally held my little girl!


We had visitors right away, and Qiana was such a good girl.

She loved her bath at the hospital and got her footprints taken.





She had some eating issues the first little bit because she was congestion in her nose and couldn't breathe and eat at the same time. She has since gotten so much better and is eating like a champ. She is a pretty content little girl, and often just sits and stares wide eyed at her surroundings.

The hospital stay was nice, but having people waiting on you gets kind of old when they wake you every few hours for a blood pressure check or what not. And having to watch live tv was pretty much the equivalent to medieval torture, and I was ready to come home. I did get lots of visitors, which was a nice change of pace to the overall boring days.

After leaving the hospital on wednesday, I came to stay with Kim and her crew for a couple of days so Kim could help out during the day. Qiana and I made it through our first night together okay so hopefully that is a good sign of things to come. It's been fun watching Elsie with Qiana. She is so sweet with her, an so fascinated by the baby that is now always around. She is having some slight issues with jealousy when it comes to Aunt Gi Gi's attention, so I'm trying to still give her loves when I can.

Overall things are going well, and hopefully I can keep that up. I have a sweet little girl, who I pretty much can't stop staring at...sometimes I think she is giving me a look that says "seriously? you still just looking at me...." but I love it.