Oct 24 2008
My Biggest Baby
Today my oldest turned 14.
14 years ago today at the tender age of 19, I had a baby wrenched from a gaping wound in my abdomen after 13 hours of barely progressing labor. Turned out my troublesome little girl was double wrapped in her cord.
The experience, I’ll admit, was less than gratifying. See, I had certain expectations going in to that delivery. I’d read books, I’d taken Lamaze, I had it all planned out. Oh the arrogance of youth. There would be no drugs, just me focused and breathing and easing my baby in to the world.
Then reality hit with that first startling contraction, then another and another and another.
See, I was a pansy. Worst pain I’d ever felt before that was limited to skinned elbows and possibly an ear infection. I once got accidentally cracked on the head with a baseball bat, but that didn’t even come close to the searing, blinding ache in my guts. Wow.
Of course, I asked for drugs. Which didn’t so much alleviate the pain as give me double vision and make the whole experience a psychedelic blur. When they handed me the release for the c-section, I signed away happily. “Get her out by any means necessary.”
After it was over, my relief was matched only by my disappointment. I’d failed. I was off to a bad start. Worse still was that beautiful alien babe they wheeled in next to my bed. I read all about how to care for her, what to expect, how to identify cries. I knew about meconium and lanugo, cradle cap and colic. All my theoretical expertise thrown out the window as I stared at my baby. My baby? How could I possibly have a baby? What was I thinking?
It didn’t help she was the scariest baby in existence. From birth she had a stare that seemed to pierce right through you. And she cried. Non-stop. For four months. Colic. Not colic as a blurb, or minuscule section in some baby preparedness book. Real, raging colic. Colic as the center of my universe. Colic as my arch nemesis.
Back then the pediatrician said to me, “There’s nothing you can do? Put some cotton in your ears and wait three months.” Jackball. Now a days the Dr. might have played with the formulas, assumed possibly a lactose sensitivity. Then, what did I know? I believed him.
Talk about post-partum depression. When she cried, I cried. It was that simple. Those days for me are remembered from beneath a dark shroud, a cloudy haze of frustration and defeat. It was rough. If anyone had told me then, I’d be volunteering to have three more children, I would have punched them in the nose.
Obviously I got better. I survived. More importantly, my screaming, colicky baby made it to teen-hood no worse for the wear.
I am truly blessed to have her. She changed my life.
So October 24th wasn’t the happiest day of my life, there are no photos of us gazing adoringly in to eachother’s faces. I was too busy worrying that my guts were going to spill out everytime I sneezed. But she was the start of our little family, the headstrong girl that forced me to grow up, the one I make all my parenting mistakes with. She’s awesome in spite of all that.
My teen. Happy Birthday.
