And Then There Were Two

She is quite animated, she has dimples, her eyes seem to tell a story that will be told with wisdom in the future, she loves to stretch, she finds comfort in closeness, she is a messy eater, she smiles and laughs out loud in her sleep, her hair curls up when she cries, her big brother gave her a “tour” of our apartment, he picks out her sleep clothes and kisses her goodnight, she has no streaming tears yet, her feet are absolutely adorable, she loves her pacifier and throws a true conniption each and every time it falls out, and will literally knock your hand away as you try to give it back to her, she falls asleep while and after nursing and wakes up 2 minutes later to finish, she only likes baths when she is draped with warm rags, she hardly sleeps in her crib, she loves riding in her pink and brown stroller, she grunts more than she cries, she loves her boppy, she hates for her hands to be touched, purple is her color, she can stare at an object for a good 3 minutes, she sometimes makes a face of pure disgust when you try to give her the pacifier that she loves so much, she watches television with me, she sucks her arm and fist, you know she is in a deep sleep when she spits the pacifier out, I think she enjoys pooping consecutively after I have changed her diaper consecutively, she is hard to burp, and most importantly she sleeps through the night...she's our little goddess..Halima Ava Marie!



Hi everybody! Well, I am back! Our little family has grown by one and we could not be any happier. Her name is Halima Ava Marie Taylor and she joined us in this world at 10:35am Sunday May 17th at 7 pounds and 3 ounces. My delivery went pretty fast in my opinion, especially in comparison to the delivery of our son, which took around 16 hours. This time it took only 6 hours! I started having contractions Saturday, but they were so sporadic and not that strong, that I did not worry about them. It was not until 3am Sunday morning did I realize that um, hey these are labor contractions. Mind you I did not go into labor on my own with our son, so I honestly did not remember how a real contraction felt, but boy was I reminded. The contractions became faster and much harder as to where I would have to stop mid-walk and kneel down a bit. It was an odd feeling, because for a few seconds you feel absolutely miserable and then for several minutes it's pure bliss. So my mood went in and out from controlled breathing and a bit of tension to laughing and joking around with my husband.

At first they were not sure if they were going to keep me until the nurse saw how hard the contractions were. So after walking from about 4 up until 5:30am the contractions were getting even stronger and quicker. I opted not to go “au natural” with this birth as well, so after the nurse gave me a bit of pain relief I was in total bliss. I'm not going to lie, I felt great. I could still feel when I was having contractions, but the intensity of it was ten times lighter. My husband laughed as I was EXTREMELY relaxed by that point and then came the epidural. Not too shortly after that I found myself pushing so hard that once again, I felt as though I was pushing my organs out..lol. As I felt the shoulders of baby girl come out I took a sigh of relief which was immediately followed up by random questions and thoughts to myself like: will she cry(our sons cord was wrapped around his neck, so it was total silence at first, which had both my husband and I a bit scared)...is she ok, what does she look like, I hope we bond, does she have all ten fingers and toes, and is her head shaped ok..lol.

I was able to watch as they gave her her first bath, something I missed with my son, as they took him out of the room. I could not wait to meet her..to hold her, and to gaze into her eyes. She smelled heavenly and was quite cozy as I nursed her for the first time. I was quite happy..I could not believe it, we now had a baby girl...sweetness, delicateness, gentleness. We named her Halima..which means gentle.

So after all the usual cleanup all I could think about was how I was ready to get out of there. For some reason the nurses and doctors could not comprehend why I wanted to leave the next morning, and I'm like..um, because I would rather not be disturbed every 2 hours for pressure checks and temperature checks and offerings of medicines that I did not want. So we left the next morning with our bundle of joy and have been enjoying her presence since.