Part four of Isela Marí’s arrival: Afterwards

Finally a part four and with lots of pictures! After I finish up five about our arrival home and slowwwly adjusting to life with two, I think I might take a break from these and eventually get to the compare and contrast down the road at some point. I just really want to get back to our regular life posts!

Here are the links to parts one, two and three if you missed them!

Part four of Isela Marí’s arrival: Afterwards

Baby girl was born at 8:38 pm. We had arrived at the hospital just before 7:30 or so, parked the car out front and got me checked into the Birth Center. Dan made a trip to bring the stuff in and parked the car in the parking garage. The ticket for the parking garage said he parked at 7:56 pm. Yep, and then 42 minutes later we had our baby. Crazy, huh?

Baby Girl (she was still nameless at this point) latched right on, I was amazed at how quickly she was ready to nurse and kept telling everyone to “look, look she’s latched on!” The nurses wrapped her up while she was on me and I soon delivered the placenta. After the chord had stopped pulsating, Dan did the honors of cutting it.

Unfortunately, because everything happened so fast, we didn’t get any pictures of the birth or immediately afterwards, which was kind of a bummer. The tub was only a quarter full by the time I birthed, so they just emptied it and they had to call the doula back to go home! Small price to pay though, right? I’ll keep telling myself that.

I then called my mom and step dad, Robert, to break the news. I had called them when we were leaving for the Hospital Birth Center, but told them to stay put and to not come until I called them again with a better estimate as to timing and what was going on. I assumed we would have time to get settled and then I would call and maybe have an idea if they should come down with Joaquin or not. I was not opposed to him seeing the birth or to him being nearby during it, if it happened to work out that way. I was more concerned about his sleep schedule and didn’t want to have him up at the hospital all night. So you can imagine their shock when I called not to tell them when to come down, but that I had just had the baby! I remember telling Robert “I couldn’t help it, it just happened!”

Dan and I had a little bit of time to ourselves with the baby and then the nurse weighed and did all the newborn stuff except of course the stuff we opted out of. Yep, that's me about an hour and a half after the birth!








My parents and Joaquin soon showed up. Joaquin had been obsessed with babies since we talked about them so much to prepare him as best we could for what was ahead, so he was super excited to meet little Baby Girl. Dan was holding her when they met for the first time and it was love at first sight. Joaquin seemed a little scared of me though and was hesitant to get too close to me at first. It wasn’t until I was holding the baby that he came and finally gave me a hug. I still wonder why.








It was a great thing I had had a big bowl of pasta before we left for the 3pm visit to the midwife to sustain me through the birth but I’m so glad that I had packed our birthing cooler full of goodies because I was suddenly starving! While my mom and Robert both got some cuddles in I ate my ginormous sandwich and some crackers…I’m telling ya, that was the best tasting sandwich I have ever had! Over the next two days I worked through the remainder of the cooler goodies, so all that work in early labor totally did not go to waste!





At this point we still didn’t have a name. It was between Isela (ee-SEL-ah) and Dahlia. For a while I was leaning towards Dahlia, but over the past couple of weeks I just knew in my gut was going to end up being Isela. I knew my mom wanted Isela; she did give it to me as my middle name after all, and Dan had been leaning toward it all along. Finally that first night, Dan and I decided. Baby Girl was now Isela Marí,

When the family all left it was well after 10pm, we did our best to get some sleep that night, but we were both running on a pretty big adrenaline rush. The nurses were great about trying not to disturb us while still helping me with all the fun stuff like going to the bathroom. We were in a big queen sized four poster bed and they were totally cool about us all sleeping together as a family. It did kind of suck though that there was no TV or even wi-fi so Dan watched some boring netflix movie on his computer while I slept on and off.

The next day and night were a bit of a blur. My mom and Joaquin came for another visit as did my sister, Ceci and her husband, Brandon. Later in the morning Dan went home to freshen up and came back a bit later in the afternoon to keep me company and to bring me some "Friends" dvds. Iris also came by and took some pics of Isela and I. Eventually I sent Dan back home to get a decent night’s sleep though, while I stayed the next night with just Isela.










That night my regular midwife was on call so she came and visited me and told me how proud she was. It was great to see her at the end of it all even though she didn’t end up getting to assist me with the birth.

Because we had to stay for at least 24 hours for the newborn screening, we weren’t released until Sunday around noon. At first I was kind of bummed that I had to stay as long as I did, I was really missing Joaquin, I mean just thinking about him was bringing me to tears, I just wanted to hug and cuddle him soo bad! But looking back it was a good thing. Life is crazy at home with two, and being forced to be waited on hand and foot wasn’t such a bad thing…now it was time for reality.







Part five of Isela Marí’s arrival: Finally Home