The Waiting Game

The past few days have been difficult to understand. One moment I’m drudging through another weekday doctor appointment, and the next I’m being taken through emergency surgery and delivering a baby. I saw my daughter today; she’s in the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit, and will likely be there a while... She’s safe where she is, watched over all day and night, and I’m finally sleeping again. It’s quite an adjustment, being a mom. It was sudden. I wasn’t really ready. Even less so than I would have been if there had been more time to prepare. I wish I could have prepared more. Would it have made the moment easier? Would it have made it less scary? When I was laying there I felt so alone; this was one of those journeys that every woman has to do on her own, and I know that afterwards it will seem gentler, and I won’t feel as overwhelmed as I do right now. I went crying and scared into the dark, and I came through it quickly, and now there’s a small Person laying down the hall in a warm nest.

I did this. Me and my Beloved did this. We made a Person. Whatever she becomes, hopes for, dreams, does... will be because we reached for each other and loved. We wanted this child. Hoped for her, dreamed for her, and less than a year after we decided to try and make it happen, she’s here. Even though my arms feel empty, and my heart is still confused, I am her Mama. This afternoon she took my finger tip in her little hand and clutched at it. Does she know that I’m her mama even now? I remember from the earliest days of my awareness, that warm Comfort that was Mama. That loved me, and would always protect me, and would somehow always possess the ability to make it better. No matter what ever happened.

My arms are still empty. I’ve passed into another stage of this waiting game. I know that someday she will fill them, but tonight I want to cry. I wait for you, my heart. You’re so far away from me now, and I haven’t had a chance to know you yet. Sitting by your nest I can look in and see you, and I hardly dare to touch you. I don’t want to hurt you or disturb any of the tubes running through your body. I don’t want to hurt you by accident, cause I’m so big and you’re so tiny. I just want to love you and keep you safe, and it hurts that all these strangers know how to do it and I don’t.