Happy Birthday Baby Daniella!

1-07-2011

Today, as I walked out of my house, I made a list of everything I could do to keep myself busy during the staff meeting that was going to happen today. Not a fan of them, I made sure I had my phone and a notebook for doodling in my bag. Around 10:30am, I got a call from my friend who works at the hospital. A friend of hers had a sister in law in the maternity ward and she was going into labor. My friend remembered my wish to see a birth and invited me to come watch. I rushed out of the school, I had no problem missing the meeting, and raced to the hospital. Upon arriving, my friend and I went to the labor unit where we found the mama in a room with 2 other mamas all in labor. We learned she was not dilated completely, so we went to my friends office to wait. Every hour, we would go up to check on her and see how she was doing but always the response would be bado ( not yet) so we would go back to my friends office and wait some more. Around 12, my friend had a patient she had to see and so I went to wander around outside. When I was finally allowed back in, my friend told me to go up to check on the mama. As I was rounding the corner to the delivery room, I heard a baby start to cry. As I walked in, they had just delivered the baby, a girl, and had her on the table cleaning her off. I was disappointed I missed the actual birth but glad I was there to be the first one the baby opened her eyes to. I was so surprised when after maybe 10 minutes, the mama got up and walked out into another room, this time the recovery room, where 4 other mamas were resting after giving birth. I congratulated the mama and took my leave, letting her get some rest. Later that day, my friend called me and told me the mama thanked me for my support and that the family decided to name the baby after me, Daniella, the Kenyan way of saying my name since Danielle sounds too similar to Daniel. So now I have a namesake in Kenya. Oh and don’t worry, I still plan on seeing a full birth. Not sure if it will be the best form of birth control, putting me off kids for good or will make me want to have one that much more. We shall see.