The day she was born

Yes, I know, it's been far too long without a real post (forgive a woman) so i plan on catching up today. First up? The details of Amelia's birth.
On January 26th, as you well know, Cheyenne & I were told that we would need to move our c-section date from February 12th up to January 27 due to weeks of low amniotic fluid and a breech position that did not significantly change even with strict bed rest.
As you can imagine we went into a total panic! Of course, we knew that we were going to have a baby fairly soon but it's quite another thing altogether to be told that "soon" actually means tomorrow and at a specific time to boot. We spent the day running around town trying to get any last minute things that we thought we might need but hadn't picked up yet (what with us thinking we still had another 2 weeks) and because it helped take our minds off of the panic that was setting in.
That night we made sure to go out to dinner and chat (i had removed myself from bed rest since it seemed unnecessary at this point) since it would surely be a while since we could do so again with any kind of peace of mind. When we got home i took a sleeping pill (as recommended by the doctor) and Cheyenne had a cocktail to help calm our nerves and get some much needed sleep, though even with these things we didn't get a lot of zzz's that night.
Our doctor asked us to be at the hospital at 1:00pm so that we would be all settled in for our scheduled 3:00pm c-section which means that getting up at 7:00am was hardly warranted on our part but of course, we didn't get any sleep.
At the hospital we were checked in and set up in a "recovery room" where we would spend the hour before the appointment and where we would be taken for 1-2 hours after surgery before being taken to our post-op maternity room. My mother showed up at 2:00pm buzzing with nervous and happy excitement and my dad showed up (late as always) at 3:00pm on the dot and was filled with just as much, if not more, excited energy. To say that it was a happy room is putting it very mildly.
St. Vincent's Hospital is the busiest maternity ward in the state and in 2009 they delivered over 6,000 babies in this location alone, given this information we should not have been surprised to learn that our c-section was just one of 12 for that day and that (of course) they were running behind and ours would be delayed (this being hardly calming info to the nerves), we didn't end up going into the surgery room until 4:15pm! Over 20 babies were born in that hospital on that day alone!
Once we got the ok to go into surgery the whole thing hit me: i was going to have an operation and it would end with me being a mother. I'm not sure which part of that scared me more but either way it ended with me being speechless and shaking.
Once in the room i was prepped with a spinal block (which wasn't as bad as i had thought, though it does confirm that when we have our next child i will be going natural - assuming it's a V-BAC) after which Cheyenne was allowed in the room (by the by, he looked adorable in his scrubs and charmed the pants off of the doctors and nursing staff) and the surgery began. It only took about 10 minutes from the moment that they started until our baby arrived, just long enough really to fill each other in on what had happened to each of us while we were separated during prep time (i told him about the bizarre numb feeling and how i got through the whole thing without fainting and he told me all about the other dad waiting for his wife to get prepped) and then the doctor turned to us and asked if we wanted her to lower the screen so that we could see with our own eyes what gender our child was (no thank you, i don't need to see myself filleted, just tell us). "It's a girl" was happily sung out and immediately followed by the wails of our daughter and just like in the movies all of our fears vanished and were replaced by uncontrollable happy sobs from both of us. The nurse brought her around the screen so that we could see her and right then Cheyenne turned to me and said "that's our Amelia" (we had been trying to decide between 3 names if the baby was a girl and figured that we would know which one was right when she arrived and we could see her) and he was right, she was always an Amelia right from the start.
After the baby arrived Cheyenne got to go over and watch her APGAR test, her first bath, and her measurements being taken (the test scores were an 8 and a 9, her bath was a scream fest, she was 19.5 inches & 6 pounds 6 ounces) while i was put back together like Humpty Dumpty (of note, my doctor interned with a plastic surgeon and didn't use a single staple or surgical tape - both of which can leave gnarly scars- but instead used teeny tiny stitches and now that I'm all healed on the outside I can tell you that you cant see an incision line at all).
After the surgery we were supposed to be taken to the recovery room for just an hour or two tops then moved over to the room that we would be staying in and where the anxiously waiting friends and family would be able to see the baby (only mother, partner, doctors, and baby are allowed in the recovery room). Well, since there were so many children born the wait went from 1-2 hours to 4 hours which i assure made my parents and our friends crazy. Cheyenne took pictures of all of us and went out to the waiting room to tell everyone that we had a little girl and to show off the pictures, each person (I'm told) cried with happiness.
We finally got moved into our room at 9:30pm where Grammy (my mom), Grandpa (my dad), & Aunt Holly got to hold Amelia for a bit and coo over her after which the three of us as a family settled in for our first night together...