I haven’t posted in so long. So long that I’m not even sure of how to start or where to begin. I feel like I’m peeking into a cobweb infested room I haven’t opened in years. Neglecting my first love and one of my few hobbies wasn’t intentional, just a by-product of a busy life – which has just recently become exponentially busier. And yet here I sit, clacking away, happily ignoring the twenty other things I should be doing because I’ve missed this so much.
I’m a different person now. I think. Or at the very least, I have a new title: Mother. Holy hell, right? Bet you didn’t see that one coming. To be fair, neither did I. It hit my husband and I like a semi, barreling over us suddenly and ferociously while we had been hop-skipping with our heads up our own asses in a field of flowering irresponsibility and freedom. We were so instantly ripped from being mid-twenties newlyweds to soon-to-be parents that my husband didn’t speak for almost an hour after I told him the happy news. It was a surprise, to say the least.
Being pregnant was the absolute god-awful worst. The first six months I kept saying how lucky I was, how easy the pregnancy was. I never got any of the most feared side-effects. I stayed happily hemorrhoid free and, up until the end, was mostly comfortable. Don’t be fooled by your body seemingly handling things well in the beginning. The last 3 months I was retaining enough water to fill a swimming pool. Rolling over in bed was a 5 minute affair that would often end with me cursing and whimpering. Shoes became my arch-nemesis. If they weren’t slip on ballet flats they couldn’t be worn… that is if I could see them over my huge belly in the first place. Once an object was dropped on the floor it ceased to exist. If the question was placed on how important said item was, it was never important enough for me to risk lowering myself to the floor to get it, for fear I may not be able to get back up. I kept joking the baby must be huge – while batting away various objects that seemed attracted to my ever-increasing orbit.
It wasn’t until my 39 week appointment that I found out just how huge. My doctor gave me the news I had most been fearing; Baby isn’t engaged at all. No change. You’re going to be pregnant a bit longer. Just when I was resigned to going home and crying in the tub while eating ice cream she decided she’d like to see how the baby was measuring and ordered an ultrasound. I was huge and he felt big, there could be something preventing him from descending on his own. Turns out it was his line-backer shoulders and Buddha belly which were surrounded by a metric fuck-ton of amniotic fluid. He was measuring at nine and a half pounds. There was absolutely no way I was going to have the baby on my own. My cesarean was scheduled for the following Tuesday.
Baby Gordon, 9lbs 10oz, 20 inches
I was devastated I wasn’t going to have a normal delivery but I was ecstatic that the end was in sight. When the big day came all my fears were gone – I just wanted to meet my baby boy. Once in the hospital, everything was a blur until delivery. It felt like I went from changing into a hospital gown to hearing Gordon’s first fussy cry in the span of minutes, instead of hours. I was sure I wouldn’t cry, but I was wrong. I was terrified he wouldn’t be perfect. but he was. Red, huge, and supremely unhappy to be taken from his cozy home of the last 9 months, but perfect. I even saw my husbands eyes well up at the site of our creation.
How weird, to think that I made this little person. He is the product of my husband and I, and my body made him. It blows my mind. He blows my mind. I never realized I could love something this way, or that I could love my husband even more. It’s so worth it. The swelling, the aching hips, the stretch marks.
However – I do still contend that hospitals should have a nice big glass of wine awaiting you after delivery. I know, I know, you need to feed your baby too, but after 9 months without, and 3 months of absolute misery I think it would be a well-deserved treat for making a human being with my body. Right? Maybe someday.
