Confinement Diaries Week 1: The Show Begins
I was reading on a pregnancy website (seemed so long ago) about maintaining a pregnancy journal. Between the physical changes of being pregnant, starting a new job and getting ourselves ready, i barely started an email to the baby (see below), forget a journal.... so i thought it may be more appropriate to the topic at hand to ruminate over motherhood, a lifetime commitment, rather than 9 months of discomfort. Why not start chronicling it while i'm under house arrest - i mean confinement - for a month.
Our daughter Layla binte Johann wasn't a daughter until she was born. As in, her unknown gender had been debated and became the central subject of a charity drive. In a way we wanted a surprise and well... in another, for me it became a way to think 'hey, not yet, still not there yet'.
It was a way to cope with what i know will be life-changing for us. Already it was changing my life by putting me under the knife for the 1st time ever for an emergency cesarean after my attempt at natural labour. I, who thought I was so healthy and strong to 'push' through an estimated 4kg baby, and was never subject to anything more invasive than a bout of pneumonia when I was 4 plus a mammogram in recent years. The abject fear that my baby was going to be CUT out of me, greeted into the world with needles and scalpels, was more debilitating than any epidural. Jo held my hand while I cried silent tears and prayed as the doctor got ready. The few min of pre-op was the longest in my life.. even the sight of Jo in full blue scrubs couldn't make me laugh.
We held hands and breaths while prodding and cutting continued in the Star Trek operating room, all white and blue and sterile lights. I waited and tried to not wait at the same time - till there was the 1st blessed lusty indignant cry that told us things were finally looking up since labour began 16 hrs ago.
"We have a girl!" Jo shouted excitedly. "and she has a lot of hair!"
I couldnt help but sob in relief at that first loud wail, and I cried even harder when they brought her over to see me. Jo was bouncing around like an excited puppy - talking to baby and to me at the same time. "No man will ever be good enough for you!" he proclaimed. "Go see mummy, mummy wants to see you..."
The nurse brought her over, and our daughter's face came close to my face. Her eyes were open, the wailing stopped, and that look on her face was already a challenge to us:
C'mon Mummy and Daddy, are you ready?
****************
I still don't know what you'll be called, or what you'll look like. I just know that I'm terrified and excited and distraught and panicked and filled with love all at the same time. I can't even begin to imagine what life will be like when you get here - I look at friends that have just had new babies and they all say the same thing - "Your life will never be the same again" - but it's such a vague statement - never be the same good? or bad? And their motions don't seem to reflect this life-changing statement.. still picking up babies, swaddling them, nursing them, like it's no big deal, like they were born doing it.
How do They even get started?!
Our daughter Layla binte Johann wasn't a daughter until she was born. As in, her unknown gender had been debated and became the central subject of a charity drive. In a way we wanted a surprise and well... in another, for me it became a way to think 'hey, not yet, still not there yet'.
It was a way to cope with what i know will be life-changing for us. Already it was changing my life by putting me under the knife for the 1st time ever for an emergency cesarean after my attempt at natural labour. I, who thought I was so healthy and strong to 'push' through an estimated 4kg baby, and was never subject to anything more invasive than a bout of pneumonia when I was 4 plus a mammogram in recent years. The abject fear that my baby was going to be CUT out of me, greeted into the world with needles and scalpels, was more debilitating than any epidural. Jo held my hand while I cried silent tears and prayed as the doctor got ready. The few min of pre-op was the longest in my life.. even the sight of Jo in full blue scrubs couldn't make me laugh.
We held hands and breaths while prodding and cutting continued in the Star Trek operating room, all white and blue and sterile lights. I waited and tried to not wait at the same time - till there was the 1st blessed lusty indignant cry that told us things were finally looking up since labour began 16 hrs ago.
"We have a girl!" Jo shouted excitedly. "and she has a lot of hair!"
I couldnt help but sob in relief at that first loud wail, and I cried even harder when they brought her over to see me. Jo was bouncing around like an excited puppy - talking to baby and to me at the same time. "No man will ever be good enough for you!" he proclaimed. "Go see mummy, mummy wants to see you..."
The nurse brought her over, and our daughter's face came close to my face. Her eyes were open, the wailing stopped, and that look on her face was already a challenge to us:
C'mon Mummy and Daddy, are you ready?
****************
I still don't know what you'll be called, or what you'll look like. I just know that I'm terrified and excited and distraught and panicked and filled with love all at the same time. I can't even begin to imagine what life will be like when you get here - I look at friends that have just had new babies and they all say the same thing - "Your life will never be the same again" - but it's such a vague statement - never be the same good? or bad? And their motions don't seem to reflect this life-changing statement.. still picking up babies, swaddling them, nursing them, like it's no big deal, like they were born doing it.
How do They even get started?!
posted by tygertyger at 8:56 AM
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