a second birth story - part fourteen

In my second birth story so far;

My water broke at 11.30pm,

I booked into hospital as high risk

with meconium present in the waters.

At 4cm just before 3.30am I got an epidural,

only to be fully dilated just after 4am.

After a break to let the baby descend and the epidural wear off a bit,

I pushed my baby into the world at 6:05am.

She cried a good, clear, loud cry

and Lynne said to tell paediatrics that they weren't needed.

And we let ourselves breathe.

She was moved from the foot of the bed

up onto my stomach

as they rubbed her to clean her up

and wrapped her in a towel.

I was desperately trying to clamp eyes on her face

and hardly hearing the chorus of people;

the midwives and my husband all saying “It's a girl.”

As I finally got my hands on my newly born baby

and pulled her towards me

where I could look into her eyes,

I finally acknowledged the words from my husband;

“We've got a daughter. She's a girl.”

A daughter?

A daughter!

It felt like the biggest surprise

and the most natural thing in the world.

I felt shocked,

but also like I'd always known.

“Hello baby girl” I said

really looking at her for the first time.

She seemed so familiar

and yet so unknown too.

Not unlike her big brother,

but completely different too.

As the placenta was delivered and I was stitched up,

she went for a cuddle with her daddy

and as I watched him hold her for the first time,

watched him cradle her head in his hand,

and watched him lock eyes with her;

I saw him change,

I saw him fall instantly in love with her.

And in that instant I loved him more.

I had known that being a daddy to a girl would change him,

that she would hold his heart

and make him more fragile somehow,

but I hadn't expected it to be so visible before my eyes.

She came back to me

and we finally got to meet properly.

It felt strange at first

to be holding such a tiny sleeping baby.

The weight and size of a toddler felt so familiar to me,

and she seemed so teeny and breakable;

so alien in comparison.

Then she opened her eyes

and stared right into me,

like she had seen me somewhere before.

In that second I knew that I knew her too,

that she was a perfect fit for me,

the perfect fit for us.

My little best friend in the making,
and friend for life for my number one little man.

I was full of the pride and glow of having just brought a life into the world.
After all the help I had needed birthing my little man,
I felt like a rockstar for having done it myself.
And there was already a warm and content feeling falling over us.
Like with two children, we were now properly a family,
in a way that we hadn't quite been before.

As it sunk in that we were a four now
I couldn't wait to get home and get started on our life together.
I didn't have any of the fear at being let loose in the world with a baby
that I had had the first time around.
As we shared the news with family
and then with friends
and the messages of congratulations began to pour in,
we just counted down the minutes until we could be a four properly.