Bye bye baby, Hello toddler!

I can't believe it's been a year already! It feels like yesterday that we were rather impatiently waiting for the arrival of our little Princess Fiona. I call her that because she aint your regular classic fairytale princess type... no she's more your modern day kick-ass I-know-what-I-want princess type. Yep that's our Sumayah. She has this bib that is so perfect for her, it reads, "what part of princess don't you understand!" So it's the night before her birthday and i find myself reminiscing about this momentous night one year ago.

My gynae was so convinced that I would go into labour at 38 weeks, but that just made the wait much longer because we were anticipating her birth any moment for 2 weeks. My actual due date was Monday 29 June 2009. My mom arrived Friday, 26 June and Yaasier's parents and sister surprised us with a drive up from Cape Town on the Saturday, while my husband's grandmother had been staying with us for 2 weeks already. So we were a pretty full house, all... waiting! So due date came and I visited the gynae one last time. I was so convinced he was gonna tell me that I was dilated and that labour was imminent because I had been having 2 weeks of pre-labour  back pain. But alas! that was not to be. Funny how my first thought was, 'oh no! my mom is only gonna be here for 2 weeks and they only induce after 10 days overdue so she might miss the birth!'

Fortunately, doc put my mind at ease and said that he would book me in for an induction the thursday morning in the event that I didn't go into labour naturally before then. So D-day came and went as did Tuesday and finally Wednesday last chance for au-naturalle. Of course by now every morning when I crawled out of my cave after a very uncomfortable night of no sleep in an upright position, I would meet with a house full of loved ones and inevitably someone would ask, 'no baby yet?' And everytime I so much as paused in a sentence or went a little quiet my mom would anxiously ask me, 'are you having contractions?'

But wait! Wednesday morning was different after all! I certainly was having contractions at very regular intervals and they were getting stronger as the morning went on. I knew it wasn't rush to hospital this instant kind of contractions, I could still have a decent conversation and you know... breathe (those of you who have gone through natural labour will know what I mean). But nevertheless I was pretty convinced that this was it. So at about 9am Yaasier and I said our goodbyes and received our well wishes, packed the hospital bag in the boot and off we went. The strangest thing, I was having contractions all the way to the hospital (only about 10 mins away) right up to the second they put the monitor on my belly... and then everything just stopped! I was quite annoye lying there actually wishing for the pain because at least it would mean we were in business. But when the nurse came to check there was only 1 stong contraction in the whole hour that we were there. So we were sent home. It was about 10.30am and Yaasier and I decided to go and have breakfast before having home. You'll never believe but we stopped at KFC! I had a most delicious zinger burger for breakfast and then we headed home. Imagine the disappointment when we walked in the door with no baby! Bilaal of course couldn't understand why we didn't bring home the baby. I hadn't explained to him the natural birthing process so he was under the impression we went to the dr to have the baby taken out (I showed him C-sec pics in a magazine).

I don't remember much else about that day, probably because I was a bit distracted? It was about 6pm and we were all downstairs getting ready to have a light supper. I had been feeling the contractions again and they were definately getting strong enough for me to hold onto something while waiting for it to pass. So the loved ones convinced me to go back to hospital. So off we go again and find ourselves at the hospital again at about 8pm, and as I feared the second they put the monitor on the contractions slowed down and weren't very stong at all. Two hours later the nurse told us that as I was due for an induction the next morning and needed to be there at 4am I could stay there to wait it out or I could go home and relax, maybe have a hot bath to spur things along. Since we were only 10mins away i decided I wanted to go home and bath in my own bath with bubbles. The minute I got into the car the contractions were back again, but I decided to go home anyway. Once again we strolled into the house... with no baby. Yaasier ran me a hot bath and the minute i got out the contractions came strong and fast! I got dressed, but when it got to putting on my shoes I couldn't even bend! So back to hospital at about 11.30pm. I think the whole anticipation and false alarms was just so unbearable that when we pulled up to the hospital I just burst into tears. The poor security guard was so concerned. He brought me a wheelchair and quickly pushed me into the maternity ward while Yaasier parked the car. This was it! This was really really it!

And at 1.30am on the 2 July 2009 our precious little girl, weighing in at 3.4kg and 49cm long, was born.