I took this picture of my baby girl last night. My last photo of her as a child, seventeen years and 364 days old. I have waited for this day through her roller coaster teens, mouthy tweens, and independent soul from birth. There were days when I didn't know if we were gonna come out of this alive.
The day I found out I was expecting, my bestie Meena was the first person I told. She asked how we felt about this, and I started crying and said, happy. We went straight to Babies R Us and bought her the cutest blankie, outfit, and some other trinket. Fast forward nine months and I was due 5/5 and my last day was the Friday before. I scheduled a massage with my Aunt Gini, and the night before Vannah was born I had a full body massage then came home and cleaned out every cabinet we had and finished painting the dining room.
On May 2, 2001, around ten am, my water broke just like on every show you see. I was standing in the kitchen and sploosh. My baby daddy and Meena were still asleep and I figured I would be in labor forever. So I cleaned, took a shower, shaved, and tried to look presentable. My mom looked great when my sister was born a few years earlier, so I tried to accomplish what she did in still looking nice even though you are about to pop out a carbon-based life form through what seemed an impassable portal.
Around noon closer to one, I finally called my mom and woke up the soon to be daddy and soon to be auntie. By two pm, I was ready to head to the hospital. I was shocked when the ER kept acting like I wasn't in real labor, but then after a little check under the hood they realized, I hadn't pissed myself and my water was broken.
They gave me way too much epidural. I couldn't feel a thing. We still joke that my mom, my aunt, and baby daddy pushed harder than I did. I was also blessed that my grandmother asked to be part of the birth since she did not really get to witness her own kids births or any other grandchild. I was so happy to have her in my corner.
By the time she joined us at 933 pm, my nurses were telling me about a horde of people in the hallways waiting to hear our baby was healthy, happy and a girl. She had been onry during the one ultrasound I had, but I knew she was gonna be a girl. We didn't even pick out a baby name. I had dreams about having a girl and met her as she was older in the dream. She had reddish blonde hair in my dream.
Then the pain began as the epidural wore off, a splitting headache like no other feeling I had ever encountered. 36 hours later they realized that the anesthesiologist had gotten an air bubble in my spine and it was cured with a small bit of my blood from my arm. And instantly I felt better.
This is my story of Vannah, the baby formerly known at TK (the kid) and Nova Rion (the name I picked before my mother suggested the name from my favorite childhood movie, Savannah Smiles.
Fast forward to today, I am in Mercy Fairfield for a meeting, 18 years almost to the hour that I got to the hospital in labor with my baby girl. Its a small world that is about to get very big for one little lady.
