Marcus Jeffrey Taylor was born on April 15, 2014
at 11:11am, weighing 7.3 lbs - 19 inches long.
In the process of building MikNao Dance Studio, we found out we were pregnant! What a wonderful surprise that was. Throughout the project of building the studio, it was sweet memories always feeling Marcus move around. He would kick entra hard when he would hear the music, especially the drums during hula from the ipu drum. We had our grand opening, and off to the hospital we went.
He was delivered by c-section by Dr. Tang, at Queen of the Valley in West Covina, where both girls were born. During the c-section, I started to feel a lot of pains from them proceeding with taking him out, so they knocked me out. I soon woke up hearing his cry and I remember smiling, thinking, "Oh good! He's here!" I looked at Murad and he said, "You were only out for like, 6 seconds." (He's a cute liar.) They wrapped Marcus up and placed him on my chest. I'll never forget the warmth of his face against mine, giving him kisses as the nurse spoke to me about what was going to happen next. They took Marcus off to the nursery and Murad followed. I stayed behind to have a Tubal Ligation. Once they were done, I was brought to recovery and Murad walked in shortly to inform me that Marcus had to go to the NICU due to having trouble breathing. My heart sunk...
As I was brought back to the NICU of where Mikaela's life began, I looked around and saw so many faces of nurses and doctors from 5 years ago, and most of them rememebered me. I heard, "It's you! You're back!", "You were the one! Where the power went out!" (And that never happened again.) The next 14 days were a roller coaster of emotions, and as hard as it was seeing Marcus go through so much, I began to let go of many negative emotions from Mikaela's birth. The head NICU nurse came and found me! I saw her peek her head out from behind the nurses taking care of Marcus and I began to cry. She was the one who told Murad I made the right decision and everything was going to be ok. Another head nurse, who gave me nightmares, was taking care of Marcus one day. I didn't say anything until she said I looked familiar. I told her about Mikaela's birth and she remebered her, and so did the nurse who was giving Marcus his picc line. They both asked how Mikaela was doing, I told them about her life up to the dance studio and the first nursed turned around and said, "Wait, so that dance studio in La Verne by Shogun is yours?" I smiled and said yes. Her response was, "So you triumphed. Good for you." I'll be honest, it felt good to hear her say that. My days were spent holding Marcus as much as I could. Murad hired a nanny to help my parents with the girls. The dance studio continued to run with the help of amazing friends.
The day Marcus was able to go home, so many of the nurses came to say goodbye. Even the one who brought me to meet Mikaela for the first time. Her name was Janice. The best part of leaving, besides taking our baby home was hugging her, saying thank you and sorry for any type of attitude I may have had, I was just lost and afraid. We both teared up and said goodbye.
We left there with so much graditude for the nurses in the maturnity ward at Queen of the Valley. And we brought our son home to meet his sisters.
Pictured below is the head NICU nurse
that was there for Mikaela's birth.
