In the small hours of Saturday morning September 17th 1983, I got to meet the small child who had been sharing my body for the last ten months. Gestation for a human baby is thirty-eight to forty weeks, which is more than nine months.
She arrived three days before she was due. I’d been sleeping poorly; there is no good, comfortable position for puffy, swollen, large pregnant women in the days before delivery.
It was a Friday night and we’d just finished dinner when she let us know we’d be meeting her soon. We arrived at Boulder Community Hospital around 11:00 pm. The labor and delivery floor was packed. There had been a huge blizzard around Christmas and we knew we weren’t the only ones spending some cozy hours at home on those snow packed days.
The sweet sound of her first cry was quickly followed by an overwhelming tenderness, then a love I had never felt. It was different, part animal instinct, part motherly love. I would do anything for this child. Then she was handed to me and I kissed her wet face and examined her fingers and toes and placed her on my chest and then cried tears of exhaustion and joy.
At the moment of her birth, I was changed. I became a mother.
Happy 26th birthday honey!
No comments:
Post a Comment