She's My Girl

She came out of me screaming, a hellion covered with the bloody remnants of her prior home. I saw her there, to my right, screaming under the bright lights of the OR, being wiped off, before I closed my eyes. After 27 hours, the desire to sleep was relentless.

When the midwife held her over my battered body, trying to get her to latch on, I couldn't keep my eyes open. Our first nursing was a haze, lost to drugs and the marathon of labor.

We truly met the next day, when I was awake enough to look at her and note her blue eyes. I nursed her and became drowsy again, but this time the sleepiness was from the pleasant oxytocin rush that comes from a little mouth getting her fill of colostrum.

Oxytocin is the love hormone.

Diane Ackerman wrote, "So the mother and baby find themselves swept away in a chemical dance of love, interdependency, and survival," and that's how it was that first day, when I had the chance to fiercely hold the body that had been poking me for the past few months: the elbows that would protrude, the knees, the feet, the perfectly round head that would butt my cervix and stop me dead in my tracks. The oxytocin flowed as I looked down at her sucks and pauses, the fluttering of her jaw, examining her furry ears and brushing her cheek with my finger.

It's been six years since that day. Six years since my broken water, six years since swept membranes, since castor oil and contractions every 90 seconds, six years since a hospital transfer, since Pitocin, since occiput posterior, since midwives and nurses and doctors, six years since I balled up my birth plan after 27 hours and chucked it as infection came on, since I lay shaking on the table thinking oh my god they're cutting me open and then, then, six years since her cry first entered my ears and registered. She's mine. Mine.

So there was love, the kind both natural and chemical. And there was the slow creeping in of terror: the realization that this creature we created would indeed be coming home with us, and that we'd have to figure out this breastfeeding thing, this non-sleeping thing, this crying thing, this healing thing.

And as much as I wanted to get in the car with my pain meds and ice packs on my boobs, and hide out in a K-Mart clothes rack, pilfering Combos and Cherry Cokes to live off of, this little baby that scared the hell out of me was also completely enchanting.

Oh oxytocin, bringer-back of frightened new mothers...

She is my evidence that we don't completely suck at the task of parenthood.

Her now 6-year old hand is constantly creating: pictures, notes, cards. Most have the same message, in one form or another.

I ♥ U Mom

Love you, Mom

I Love Mommy

Most are brightly colored, rainbows and flowers and butterflies, the stuff of her age and stage. She draws us all together, her family.

She notices things: the color of a flower, the way the sunset looks, how a clump of tall trees will remind her of being in her grandparents' cabin. I am so proud of this observant part, the recognizing and acknowledging of beauty.

She is always talking. Always planning. She has decided to live near us when she gets older, because she cannot comprehend living apart and surviving. Or, at least, this is what I tell myself. For her it's simpler. She just wants to be with us. She plans dinner and dessert menus for when we'll have 'grown-up' dinner together. She skips over dinner and gets right to the dessert: brownies dipped in chocolate sauce.

Her husband will be named George. She will have 4 children and own her own bakery. "Maybe you can work in it with me," she tells me. And actually, despite the desire to finally sleep in in my later years, this early rising to go bake with my daughter has an appeal that I can't quite describe.

She is sensitive, compassionate. When my grandmother died, she massaged my shoulders as I cried by the fireplace. She brushed my hair. She made me a card that said "I'm sorry that GG died." I watched her try to process my grief and make me feel better. She'd flutter in with a card or with words of empathy. She'd kiss my cheek and then depart, hesitantly, trying to discern if she'd made an impact.

She did. And she does. Every day.

For six years, I've had the pleasure of knowing her. And though we've hit some bumps, it's mostly been like rowing on a still lake. The sun is out and the rowing feels effortless and you just want to keep going, forever.

The pain of her birth day hasn't faded. It's impossible to forget how the earth moves, each contraction like the shifting of plates deep within the ocean. But how I'd throw myself back into the epicenter to see the glory of her, emerging.

Happy Birthday to her, my first girl, my big kid, the child who made me mother.