You’ve never seen your Love, your Light, your Bliss like this before. He’s completely in love with your new little baby – you’ve even seen him wipe away a few happy tears when they were cuddling and he thought you weren’t looking - and it reminds you of how you felt after your first son, Gabriel, was born.
You’d gone into labor at 6:45 in the morning with Gabriel and within two hours your contractions were strong and steady, happening every four minutes. Your mother picked up you and Gabriel’s father and you couldn’t help but laugh when you saw that she had donned the passenger seat with disposable Chux pads, since your water hadn’t broken yet. Your mind was racing with fear and excitement – fear of the pain and all of the things that could go wrong and if you really had the strength to give birth to a baby and excitement for finally meeting your little son.
You got to the hospital, determined to have a natural child birth, but your little son was positioned sunny side up and by noon you just couldn’t take the mind rattling pain of his bony little head pressing up against your tailbone, so you asked for an epidural. You felt defeated and weak for a moment because women had been having babies with no pain intervention since the dawn of people, and you thought you should’ve been strong enough to do the same. However, pain and experience are far more convincing and demanding than any theories or beliefs that you had about labor and motherhood, and part of being strong is knowing your limits and not pushing them so that you can fit some ideal.
You painlessly labored on and around four in the afternoon, Gabriel’s heart rate started dropping to 80 bpm with every contraction. The nurse called in the mid-wife, who decided to break your water and get him out as soon as possible. The nurse asked if it would be alright if a few of the nursing students came in to watch. At this point you didn’t care, all that mattered was safely delivering little Gabriel. In walked an entire class of nursing students and between your mother, your father, Gabriel’s father, a surgeon, the midwife and a few nurses, there were upwards of twelve people in the room when it came time to push our your little son. The midwife turned off your epidural- she claimed that a first time mother simply couldn’t successfully push without feeling the contractions- and told you to start pushing. You pushed – hard - and your body was flooded with adrenaline and awe-inspiring pain. You tapped into some internal reserve of something you’d never felt before that gave you the greatest strength and concentration you’ve ever experienced in your entire life.
The midwife yelled “STOP!” and you stopped pushing, wondering what was happening. Gabriel had his cord wrapped around his neck, though no one told you at the time. The midwife mumbled something to the surgeon about prepping the OR for a C-section, and then told you that you were going to try to push one more time. Your father whispered in your ear to push with everything you had, and that’s exactly what you did. With that push, he was born. Gabriel was an eerie shade of cadet-blue and didn’t cry. He wasn’t placed on your chest, but rather he was placed under a warming light and had tubes put in his nose and after what felt like hours, but was probably only a minute or two, he let out a grumpy cry and you’d never heard anything more beautiful in your life.
Gabriel’s father placed him in your arms and you couldn’t believe how cute he was – he had a full head of white hair and bright blue eyes. All ten toes and all ten fingers were present and accounted for, and you’d never seen anything so tiny or so marvelous.
You hardly slept during his first few days, convinced that he would just stop breathing or something equally awful if you did. You couldn’t believe that you had been given something so precious and so perfect and couldn’t fathom what you had done to deserve this. Surely something this lovely, warm, fragile and flawless can’t be meant to last.
But he was. And he has. And the only moment that has rivaled the sheer joy and amazement of his birth was the birth of his brother. Both were very different labors and deliveries, but both were equally joyful and life changing. Both are very different children, but both are equally loved and cherished.
In those first few days of his life, you fall in love with your new little son, David. As you watch his father, your Love, your Light, your Bliss, falling in love with his son and transitioning in his own remarkable way into parenthood, you feel like you’re seeing him as a man for the first time, and he’s never been more beautiful, but there is still hurt lingering in your heart.
You hope that this will last forever, because, quite simply, he’s the best man you’ve known, you’ve never loved anyone the way you do him, and you and your children deserve the kind of stability and serenity that a decent loving man can bring to a family. You’re also getting older and your heart isn’t as resilient as it once was, and you feel like if this doesn’t work out then you’re done with love.
For now, you try to just relish these first few days of David’s life, forget about past hurt, and try to re-open your heart again. After all, no one said Prince Charming had to perfect.
No comments:
Post a Comment