My heart is with a special person and her special girls today, in a hospital across town. I have picked up my favorite birth and baby book, "Great With Child," and I read it while watching my toddler crash his cars around the room. But I remember...
"Awakening from some dreaming depth, in which I was someone and somewhere else, I hear a knock on my hospital door. Oh yes. The hospital, the middle of the night. I know where I am now. 'Your baby is hungry and awake,' the nurse says softly. 'Would you like to feed him?' In the dark, I raise up my stiff, heavy body on one elbow, reach for the height-adjusting buttons on the side-rail of the bed, and shove the pillows awkwardly into place behind me, trying not to wrench any sore muscles or put any real weight on my bruised bottom. The nurse hands me a little cocoon of blankets with a tiny face peeping out. She shows me Philip's ID tages, but I know he's mine; I already know that face...
Once we get started, the nurse leaves us alone, and I lie there, watching his jaw work and adjusting his position, keeping him going with a jiggle or a stroke on his cheek. Half vigilantly attentive, half in reverie; half awake, half dreaming; utterly joyful yet frightened; euphoric yet profoundly tired... Now I lie in the night stillness together with this new one, and it seems we two are the calm center of all things; and even if I'm half asleep I seem most truly conscious, most connected to the real and right. But it can't last. A little more sleep and then daylight will come and baths and feedings and doctor's examinations..." p. 171-172
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