Happy Birthday, E
Last year at this time, I was in a hospital room, waiting for E to be born. W was there, of course, as was Sundesha. I felt like I'd been in labor for weeks, months, ages, eons. I was so ready to be done, and yet, things weren't happening quickly enough.
If things had gone the way they were supposed to have gone, if E hadn't gotten stuck and needed to be extracted, today would have been her birthday. She was born on May 23 instead, at 1:23 am. They pulled her out of me, and stitched me back up. My blood pressure went too low, and I had a nasty case of the post-anesthesia shakes. They whisked her away to NICU to make her breathe. Later, I got to see her, but I was shaking too much to hold her. I ached to hold her, but I petted her instead.
In the morning, after a couple of hours of sleep, I woke up and felt unpregnant, and the nurse came and wheeled me down to see her. She had tubes in her nose and an IV in her arm, and she was attached by wires to all sorts of monitoring machines. But she was awake, and the nurse handed her to me. She and I just stared at each other, and I felt like I'd known this tiny person forever.
"Looks like two people are falling in love with each other," a nurse said, as she walked by.
"Yes," I said, without looking up. "Yes we are."
Almost a year later, that same tiny person is standing at the coffee table, waving around a piece of paper and saying, "NAN-AN-NANAN." She doesn't know it, but the piece of paper is the instructions for the musical ride-on toy she's getting for her birthday tomorrow.
Here's to another year with the coolest person I've ever met. Happy birthday, E.
If things had gone the way they were supposed to have gone, if E hadn't gotten stuck and needed to be extracted, today would have been her birthday. She was born on May 23 instead, at 1:23 am. They pulled her out of me, and stitched me back up. My blood pressure went too low, and I had a nasty case of the post-anesthesia shakes. They whisked her away to NICU to make her breathe. Later, I got to see her, but I was shaking too much to hold her. I ached to hold her, but I petted her instead.
In the morning, after a couple of hours of sleep, I woke up and felt unpregnant, and the nurse came and wheeled me down to see her. She had tubes in her nose and an IV in her arm, and she was attached by wires to all sorts of monitoring machines. But she was awake, and the nurse handed her to me. She and I just stared at each other, and I felt like I'd known this tiny person forever.
"Looks like two people are falling in love with each other," a nurse said, as she walked by.
"Yes," I said, without looking up. "Yes we are."
Almost a year later, that same tiny person is standing at the coffee table, waving around a piece of paper and saying, "NAN-AN-NANAN." She doesn't know it, but the piece of paper is the instructions for the musical ride-on toy she's getting for her birthday tomorrow.
Here's to another year with the coolest person I've ever met. Happy birthday, E.