She's Here!!!

Naiya Oliana Thompson is here! I really didn't want to have another C-section, but man does it make a difference to have one scheduled instead of having it after 30 hours of labor! We had to be at the hospital at 6am--don't ask me why they have to schedule them so early. I was awake during the surgery and even though I was numb from the waist down, I could still feel the pressure of them pulling and pushing on me, yanking out all of my organs to get to the baby and then putting them all back in. I couldn't stop shaking too--I guess because of the drugs or something. Anyway, one thing that helped me mentally through it was I kept picturing Melia's booty dance in my head. She does this thing where whenever she's naked, she sticks her booty out and slaps it chanting "Booty, booty!" I know it's silly, but it really helped me though. Anyway, Naiya came out beautifully and when I heard her cry and saw her for the first time, I knew I loved her right away. I had been wondering how it would be possible to love another little being as much as I love Melia--I mean I knew I would, but I just couldn't imagine how I would feel that. But I did, almost right away. She weighed 8 pounds 8 oz. and was 19 1/2 inches long. She has a full head of dark hair and looks so much like Melia did when she was born. We know she's definitely our baby. Bo brought Melia that evening to meet her new baby sister and she was so cute with her. So excited to have our new baby here finally. Anyway, the next few days in the hospital were good and all of the nurses were totally great. I felt a little better each day and Naiya took to nursing well right away. She also digests great and burps easily and sleeps easily. Basically the whole experience has been like night and day from the last time we did this. I can't believe how much better I feel and how much easier it is this time!
Coming home from the hospital was an experience. Funny story now, not so funny at the time. So Bo and Melia came straight to the hospital after church at about 4:30pm. It was right around that time that I knew Naiya would want to eat, so I was trying to decide if I wanted to take the time to feed her before we went or just wait until we got home. Well, Bo and Melia hadn't eaten anything and were starving and Bo was thinking he'd just pick us up "real quick" and then go home and eat dinner. Well, we now know that trying to do anything with a 3 year old, a new baby and a wife trying to recover from major surgery is anything but "real quick". Nevertheless, we foolishly tried. So I hadn't gotten a chance to pack anything really because I couldn't lift anything and I move around about as fast as a snail right now. So Bo gets Naiya strapped in the car seat in my hospital room and then she starts crying because she's hungry. Meanwhile, Melia is hungry too and therefore fussy and getting into everything--pushing buttons on my bed, playing with the breast pump, etc. The nurse is trying to cut the bands off of Naiya's ankles while she's screaming her head off and I'm standing in the middle of all of this not able to do much but start feeling pretty stressed out. So Bo and the nurse decide to take a load of stuff out to the car first before we try to load everyone in the car. Meanwhile, I'm left there with Naiya and Melia and I'm just trying to prop myself up on the edge of the bed and hold out until my help comes back. Luckily, Naiya stopped crying by then and fell asleep, which helped my stress level to lower a lot. But then, Melia says, "My panties are wet." Now normally, I would rush her to the bathroom before she had a full on accident, but needless to say, I couldn't do that this time. So I just watched helplessly as she fully emptied the contents in her bladder all over her legs, shoes and the floor. Then, she proceeded to start stomping in the puddle she had just created and bent down to use her hands to splash in it. So lovely. Luckily, Bo and the nurse came back in time to rescue us and get her cleaned up before she touched everything in the room with her pee hands. Unfortunately, we only had extra panties for her in the car. So with the nurse pushing me in the wheelchair and Bo with the baby in the car seat in one hand and holding our barefooted, barebutted daughter's hand on the other side, we took our little parade through the hospital and out to the parking lot. Once we reached the parking lot, Bo picked Melia up under his arm like a football because she didn't have any shoes on. This would have been fine, but she was wearing a dress and her little naked booty was sticking out from under her dress all the way across the parking lot. Then, trying to load us all in the car was a whole other story--let's just say, we finally made it home with everybody mostly intact. Success!