a birth story - part fifteen

In my birth story so far;

32 hours after my water first broke,

and after hours of pain and fear and drama,

my baby has finally entered the world

with a little help from doctor and her ventouse

and a lot of pushing from me.

He let out a cry instantly,

so was allowed to be delivered up onto a blanket on my tummy

before being given to the paediatricians to be checked over.

As a result of my waters having broken so early,

he was practically dry on delivery.

So he didn’t have that slimy newborn appearance

that I’d always been a little scared of.

And despite the long and traumatic labour,

he was born really alert and wide-eyed,

like he was taking it all in instantly.

I had been quite specific

that I wanted my hubby to tell me whether the baby was a boy or a girl,

but in the rush of excitement and love that we felt,

the midwives had to remind him to look and to tell me,

and it hadn’t crossed my mind to ask.

I was just so suddenly and completely in love with this little creature.

As the paediatricians took him away to do some checks,

my husband and I stared at each other in dreamy disbelief.

Everything that everyone had ever told me about childbirth was one hundred percent true.

All the panic and the fear and the pain had completely faded away

in the exact moment that I’d first looked at him.

I knew instantly that I would have gone through it all over again

just for that look,

that feeling,

that overwhelming love.

While the doctors got down to the business of stitching me up,

my hubby went to look at his son.

He’s not really one to get emotional or excitable about things,

but when he took a break from staring at his little boy

to check that his wife was still okay,

he had a look on his face that said

he was, in fact, the cat who had got the cream.

The little guy got the okay from the paediatricians

and they brought him back over to us.

As my husband held him I touched my hand to my now empty belly.

Only moments before he had been inside there,

all cosy and warm and safe.

And now he was here.

Now I could share the job of keeping him safe with his daddy.

We were a family now.

As soon as our little man arrived,

I struggled to find any relationship between the bump and our baby.

The baby I had carried around inside of me for nine months had been Dollop.

Dollop kicked me in the hip bones,

got really bad hiccups

and wriggled a lot when I ate spicy food.

But Dollop was gone now.

It almost felt like we had traded Dollop for a baby,

I never could think of the two as being the same thing.

Dollop was all our hopes and our dreams.

This beautiful boy was our reality.

And he is,

every day and in every way,

more perfect and more incredible

than we could have ever hoped or dreamed.