Pure hubris, or maybe it was sheer delusion, had me say to my mom just a few days before I went into labor with my first-born: Mom, nature wouldn’t let a woman grow a baby she couldn’t birth!How wrong I was.
After almost 38 weeks with a belly burgeoning to the point of being unnaturally large – friends teased that they couldn’t believe I could stand upright and my husband toyed with building a counterweight in the form of a backpack – Jake and I headed to the hospital at 3 o’clock in the morning.
Laughter, waiting, sobbing, waiting some more. Listening to Jake count to 10 over a thousand times. Waiting. Phone calls from friends and family. Waiting. Eating ice cubes. Waiting. Anticipation. Agony. Even more waiting. Through a tumultuous and exhausting labor, I went from impatiently reminding nurses, “remember my birth plan?!? I don’t want any drugs! Please read it again” to eagerly accepting morphine to dull the pain of an unexpected c-section. Nineteen hours after we arrived at the hospital, we finally had him, a glowing pink ball with rolls of chub and a full head of soft black hair. It was love at first sight.
And one thing I’ve learned along this journey: whatever you think you know, you don’t.
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