Welcome to the World, Hila Zehava!

After much planning and anticipation of a masculine addition to our family, little Hila Zehava made her very feminine appearance one week ago on our (now shared) birthday of January 26. Here is our birth story...

I started a few days earlier with some period-like cramps. Wow, I thought, if these are contractions, than I can totally handle these -- they barely even hurt! At 6:30am, though, on Monday, January 26, those cramps got a little stronger. And then a little stronger. And then a little stronger. And before I knew it, I was in the hospital, screaming my brains out, beggin for an epidural. I felt like I was in a movie.

About eight hours later, I got that blessed epidural and the painful and traumatic labor experience went from unbearable to absolutely blissful. I took a little nap, chatted with Joanie, our amazing doula, ate a bit, and just chilled, with a warm flush of numbness flowing through my body.

A few hours later, after they had broken my water with a wooden stick (seriously) and given me a bit of pitocin to speed things up, a midwife came in, looked at the monitor, ran out, and quickly reentered with a staff of 5 or 6 doctors, nurses, and midwives. What I heard was "blah blah hebrew hebrew". What I saw was a look of panic on their faces as they pulled my legs up and apart, told me to hold my knees, and told me to push. I got the translated update -- our baby's heart rate was quickly dropping and if I didn't push her out in five minutes, they'd have to cut me open and take her out themselves.

They sent Menachem out of the room because of the emergency nature of the situation and told me to push again, harder this time. But...I still had the epidural and couldn't feel a thing. How can I push if I couldn't feel any of my pushing muscles? Apparently I didn't have a choice. And then, soley through the power of the mind, I visualized what I thought pushing would look like and feel like, and I pushed and pushed and pushed that baby out like there was no tomorrow.

My panicked cries of "Is my baby ok? Is my baby ok?" immediately switched to a relieved and overjoyed "My baby is ok! My baby is ok!" Menachem was back in the room by the time they threw that little girl on top of me and assured me that she was perfect.

It's a girl! "What?" we said. And my first thought, I kid you not, after of course the flood of relief and love that I felt, was "oh man, Menachem is going to have to exchange all that blue stuff for pink." (And he did.)

I delivered the placenta with no problems (it looks like a lung on a string) and then they sewed me up where they had cut me and where I'd torn -- and I didn't feel a thing.

And now one week later we're all adjusting to life with a newborn. It's tiring, at times frustrating, at times extremely painful (recovering from the stitches and dealing with sore nipples -- see my other blog about that), but always filled with wonder and amazement about the presence of this miraculous, beautiful, little baby girl.

Hila Zehava is named after my mother's mother, Gloria Goldie. Hila is Hebrew from praise/glory, and Zehava means gold.

And we love her. And you'll love her too when you get to meet her!