Talia Ruth Rodriquez

Talia Ruth Rodriquez made her way into our lives and hearts on Tuesday, February 13. She was 7 lbs. 3 oz. and 19 inches long. Mama's first words were, "she looks like Benjamin" and Daddy said "she's beautiful" (those may not have been his first words--I was pretty drugged at the time :) ) "Talia" is a Hebrew name meaning "morning dew" (appropriate as she was born early on a rainy morning). "Ruth" is after my mother's middle name (also my grandmother's middle name) and after the biblical character. It means "beautiful and compassionate" and her life verse, coordinating with this meaning, is I Peter 3:3-4.

For those of you keeping track, Talia did arrive one week earlier than planned. Our adventure began Monday night. We had moved just 2 days earlier (Saturday the 10th) and had worked hard Saturday and Monday getting things settled. We were exhausted by Monday evening and fell into bed between 10:30 and 11:00. As I was between sleep and awake, around 11:30, suddenly I had the strange realization that my water had broken! It took me a few seconds to even identify that that's what had happened. (I'll spare you the details.) I sat up and told Seth, "I think my water just broke!", to which he responded, "Are you serious?" We sat there stunned, for a couple of minutes before it hit us that we needed to get into gear. We called our neighbors/landlords to come stay the night with Benjamin and grabbed the bags we had carefully placed all together on a closet shelf so they would be easily located during the chaos of the move. We handed over Benjamin's "24 hour bag" and the "Benjamin Care Journal" I had prepared over the last several weeks to Sarah, who was knocking on our door in less than 10 minutes, and were on our way to the hospital just 20 minutes after this all began!

We got to the hospital a little after midnight and checked into Labor & Delivery. We expected to go into surgery shortly after we arrived, knowing that the c-section would probably prevent me from laboring for very long. My doctor was contacted and, to everyone's surprise, decided to wait to operate until 5:00 am. (She had been on-call 4 nights in a row and had done 9 c-sections over the weekend. I suppose I'm glad that she opted for a little more rest before cutting me open!) So Seth and I spent a fairly sleepless 4 1/2 hours waiting for the appointed time.

Having a planned c-section was a bit different from the "emergency" section I had with Benjamin. They had to prep me for surgery, including the anesthesia, before Seth was able to come in and be with me. It was a bit scary, partly because they did a "spinal" rather than the epidural I had the first time around. I didn't know anything about the procedure at all, which just made me nervous. Everything was fine, however, and Seth joined me in the O.R. a few minutes later. Almost immediately things were under way. My body did not react well to the surgery, for some reason, and I was sick throughout much of the procedure. Thankfully, I was feeling temporary relief at the moment of the birth and remember hearing her first cries and seeing a brief glimpse of her beautiful face before the neonatologist and medical team began their procedures.

We are so grateful for the safe arrival of a beautiful, healthy little girl. She is a joy to us in so many ways already. She is very content and happy, so far, and very rarely cries. She has piercing dark blue eyes which inspect anyone in her range of vision with great seriousness. She has a full head of dark brown hair, not as much or quite as dark as Benjamin's at birth. She has a petite little nose and rosebud lips. Altogether she is just beautiful!

Big Brother Benjamin is handling the transition with increasing dignity. At first he was not interested in any way in this new little bundle invading his world and taking away his Mama and Daddy, but over the past week his interest has increased daily. We are praying that his little world will stop rocking soon and allow him to become secure in the "new normal."

We do apologize for the lateness of this post. The complications juggling Benjamin's schedule and coordinating hospital runs between Benjamin's primary caretakers (Seth and my mom) kept all of us very busy for the first week. Not to mention, our phone and internet were not working in our new house, a fact which we had not had time to deal with when these unexpected events began. Such is life. We are all doing better now and, thanks to Seth and my mom, living in considerably less chaos.