I had been through pregnancy and childbirth before. I knew about the swollen ankles and the cravings, about feeling like a beached whale, getting no sleep because there's just no comfortable position. I knew what all that was like.
It was the fact I'd have to keep this baby. That I couldn't give this one up. That it was a responsibility for the rest of my life, that was about to be real, when technically until now it had only been theoretical. I was terrified. Every day for a week before my due date, I thought about it so hard I cried. I was alone, unemployed, in a strange city. I had no one to help, no one to hold my hand.
When I felt the first band of pain tighten around my stomach, I wished this had all been a dream. I prayed it wasn't actually happening. When the pains carried on, and failed to cease, I finally called a cab to get me to the hospital. I wanted someone there. I needed someone there. But I had no one and that was altogether my own fault.
The cab driver looked terrified, as if I'd deliver in his cab at any moment, despite my reassurances that it was OK, I was a doctor and I had ages to go yet. The OB staff at the hospital were all generically reassuring. I knew the meaning of everything that they said, which made the whole labour worse. With Michael, I just wanted it over, so things could go back to normal. This time, this baby was going to change my life and knowing just how close that was was enough to make me feel sick.
Leila came relatively easily. Labour is always relative though isn't it? Relative to hell, that is. I've seen women go through labours twice the length of mine, and thanked God he'd seen fit not to punish me that much. I was exhausted nonetheless when they placed her on my stomach for the first time.
All I wanted, looking down at my tiny baby daughter, was to look up into a pair of adoring eyes and know that another person loved this child as much as I did, that they wanted her much as they wanted me. To know someone else was there to share in that moment, the unconfined joy and relief of having safely brought a healthy child into the world. There are not words for it. I needed to see it in someone else, but I looked up and only saw the OB nurse hovering over me.
Leila, not that she had her name then, was quiet and wriggling. She was beautiful. I was actually overwhelmed, and very glad I decided not to give her up as well. I didn't have to wonder who her father was anymore either. She was not mixed race, in the sense that Michael had been. She had olive skin, under all the angry pink of newborns, and when she finally opened her eyes and looked at her mother, they were his eyes. Not the right colour at this early age, but definitely his eyes.
It was the fact I'd have to keep this baby. That I couldn't give this one up. That it was a responsibility for the rest of my life, that was about to be real, when technically until now it had only been theoretical. I was terrified. Every day for a week before my due date, I thought about it so hard I cried. I was alone, unemployed, in a strange city. I had no one to help, no one to hold my hand.
When I felt the first band of pain tighten around my stomach, I wished this had all been a dream. I prayed it wasn't actually happening. When the pains carried on, and failed to cease, I finally called a cab to get me to the hospital. I wanted someone there. I needed someone there. But I had no one and that was altogether my own fault.
The cab driver looked terrified, as if I'd deliver in his cab at any moment, despite my reassurances that it was OK, I was a doctor and I had ages to go yet. The OB staff at the hospital were all generically reassuring. I knew the meaning of everything that they said, which made the whole labour worse. With Michael, I just wanted it over, so things could go back to normal. This time, this baby was going to change my life and knowing just how close that was was enough to make me feel sick.
Leila came relatively easily. Labour is always relative though isn't it? Relative to hell, that is. I've seen women go through labours twice the length of mine, and thanked God he'd seen fit not to punish me that much. I was exhausted nonetheless when they placed her on my stomach for the first time.
All I wanted, looking down at my tiny baby daughter, was to look up into a pair of adoring eyes and know that another person loved this child as much as I did, that they wanted her much as they wanted me. To know someone else was there to share in that moment, the unconfined joy and relief of having safely brought a healthy child into the world. There are not words for it. I needed to see it in someone else, but I looked up and only saw the OB nurse hovering over me.
Leila, not that she had her name then, was quiet and wriggling. She was beautiful. I was actually overwhelmed, and very glad I decided not to give her up as well. I didn't have to wonder who her father was anymore either. She was not mixed race, in the sense that Michael had been. She had olive skin, under all the angry pink of newborns, and when she finally opened her eyes and looked at her mother, they were his eyes. Not the right colour at this early age, but definitely his eyes.