Hannah's Turning 6!

Tomorrow my eldest will be 6 years old. Hard to believe. It's been a long, hard road, but I waited 37 years for her to be born. I have always wanted to be a parent. My mom says my first word was "baby".

Hannah was born at 37 and a half weeks by Caesarean section. My labor was doing virtually nothing and my water had broken hours ago when labor started. She was frank breech, with her feet on her face, and face up, if I recall. None of it good for getting her birthed. One C-section later, they whisked her away into the NICU for observation (many things can be very wrong with a baby born to a mom with lupus, but having her in the NICU they could find it and treat anything they found). She was the giant of the NICU, weighing in at 7 lbs 7oz, with her legs sticking straight up in the air. (They only thing they did find was that she was born with no hip sockets. She wore a special harness, brace thing for much of her first year, but now has healthy well formed hip sockets. Who knew?)
I never got to see her in the NICU. In the recovery room I reacted to the DuraMorph and proceeded to throw up for the next 24 hours. (Note: this is so much fun when you have a zipper of fresh staples across your lower abdomen!) I awoke the following night, in my room, to this unearthly high-pitched siren. David and I were scrambling around in the dark to find out what the hell that noise was, when one of our nurses Chris popped in, and said "Oh, you have a little girl! That's what that noise is!" and giggled. By this time we had a light on and sure enough, there was a red-faced, squalling Hannah. David just looked at each other and said "Oh, what have we done?" Thus began life with Dear Daughter, Hannah...