Yesterday was baby-j’s actual birthday; today we’re celebrating.I assume that many parents engage in some sort of yearly recollection of the moment when they first met their children. As with last year, I’ve thought quite a bit in these last few days about the hours (and days) surrounding baby-j’s birth.
I went into labor with baby-j on a Monday night at 9pm, and he was born on Wednesday at about 1:30am. He kept us waiting a while. Those hours seem more traumatic in retrospect than they actually were at the time. I’m not sure if it makes much sense, but I recall being so excited that I was actually going to meet this baby and find out what he or she looked like, that the hours didn’t seem long.
After the birth, I breastfed him for the first time, and then after a while the nurses took him away so we could each get some much-needed sleep. (Had I known a bit more, I would have insisted that he sleep in the same room with me. Well, next time… if there is one.)
The thing was this, though: I couldn’t really sleep. I woke up about 3 hours later, lying there in the quiet dark, thinking, I have a baby! I want to see my baby. When can I see the baby? When will the nurses come back? I thought these same four things in a row over and over and over again. Then--and I had never considered being amazed by this--I thought, I am a mom. How cool is that?
August 17, 2005 remains the best day of my life. Now maybe that says something about the quality of the other days, but there you go.
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