Baby

You're here! After weeks of waiting for you, longing for you (swearing at you to just get out) you came. I sat, miserable, on the sofa, counting down hours to induction and talking to a friend on the phone when I suddenly realised you were on your way. Three hours later I was holding you in the water - my big, wrinkly, scrunched up, flailing daughter. I stared - "you're here! You're here!", still reeling from the speed of you, after all the waiting, the sudden rush of you into my world. You arrived blue and mewling - all 9 pounds 12 of you - like a fat kitten. Whilst your brother's eyes opened straight away and looked at me for hours, you were blind and tentative, eventually opening your eyes to look at me quizzically, wondering, perhaps, if you'd made the right decision in coming here.

Afterwards, I laid down to watch you in your daddy's arms, frantically eating to try to regain some strength. You'd taken me by surprise - I hadn't had any breakfast that morning and was shaking with hunger. After you'd been weighed and measured and examined, investigated from all angles, you were handed back to me - wrapped in a bundle - all cheeks and double chin. I stared at you - exhilarated. My baby girl.

That night, on the ward, you screamed. Pretty much all night. That new-baby screaming, more of a squall, like a small localised storm. Searching for food that I couldn't quite give you yet. I bundled you close to me and lay next to you, breathing your breath, stroking your head - trying to remember every second of this angry little beginning. Lines from poems running through my head. Maybe some things can only be captured by cliches or poetry, something about the concentrated intensity of the experience. Flushed with relief and hormones and endorphins, and giddy from lack of sleep - I loved everyone. Gushingly grateful to the midwives who took you away, fed you and brought you back an hour or so later so I could sleep. I lay and remembered this feeling from your brother's birth - a feeling of belonging, of solidarity. A room full of women, variously bruised and battered, who had all gone through the same incredible thing as me that day. I couldn't wait to take you home.