Birthday

There are some things in life that are so weird, so out of context with anything you ever thought you’d ever do, that it’s hard to get your head around, even if ten years have passed since.

For me, it was giving birth. And being pregnant. And having a daughter.

In the way of many girls, I always just knew that one day I’d be a mom. But the process of getting there – I’d never really thought that through. Then one day, David and I were sitting at lunch at Wendy’s, and over baked potatoes he laid it out for me. He proposed that in a couple of months I would get pregnant, and then nine months from then we’d have a baby. There were a couple of other details in there too, but I don’t remember what they were. He was very sure that as soon as we decided that I would get pregnant it would just happen because we wanted it to.

I hedged. I wasn’t ready. There were some things I wanted to do first. I wanted to finish school. I wanted to hang around Chicago a little more. I wanted…I don’t know what I wanted. I wanted to have a baby without actually “having a baby.” It was a little scary to me. I didn’t know what to expect.

Inside one year later I was pregnant. It took six months, not six minutes. But it happened. I had problems. We thought we had lost her, then found out she was still there (I still count us as part of a miracle.) I had this and that, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, pains in my round ligaments that felt as though a very mean, invisible person was impaling me with an ice pick. I was in and out of the hospital. I had contractions all the way from my fifth month on. I took medication for this around the clock, never getting a full night’s sleep again. I ate crackers first thing in the morning, driving David crazy with the crumbs in bed, the annoying “crunch, crunch, crunch.” I ended up on bed rest two months before my due date, held prisoner by constant news stories about Bill and Monica, Andrew Cunanan, inane sitcoms.

But all that time, I was enjoying access to the big mystery I had always heard about, the one where moms say that you can’t understand what it is to love a child until you have one. From the moment I found out that we were having a baby, I loved it fiercely, more than anyone else on earth has ever loved a child before, ever, I was sure of that! When my belly was so big I could hardly breathe, I loved her. When fire flashed out of my mouth and was only doused by a barrage of Maalox chewables, I loved her. When my toes began to remind me of those little canned sausages and I gained nine pounds of water in two days, I loved her.

Three weeks before she was due, I was in the hospital, ready to be induced the next day. I’d had enough and my doctor agreed. They gave me something to prep me and it sent me into labor. (They said that I was only the second person that they knew of that that had ever happened to. Figures.) My labor was a silver streak – my water broke at 11:30 p.m. and Madeleine made her debut at 3:53 a.m. I was so high on this whole experience that I barely slept for days, even though I was exhausted. How could I sleep? Before me was the most fascinating creature on earth!

It’s fun to think about this: you create a person, but you have no idea what they look like for a long time. When you’re pregnant, nine months is forever. It’s three seasons, three tax quarters, a lot shorter than for elephants, but a heck of a lot longer than for cats. You make and make this baby. There are the pictures in books, and probably they all look pretty much the same in the early days, but then they take on the traits that will distinguish them from all the other babies and I could not wait to see who she was going to be. She was the closest thing to me, yet I didn’t know her at all. She kicked me and rolled around and squirmed, but her face and her voice were mysteries.

When I was introduced to Madeleine, it was the culmination of one thing, the start of something else. I had gotten so used to her being in me, that I wasn’t sure what I would do with her out of me. But I sure learned quickly. And the possibilities are endless.

Yet even today, I wonder how all this happened. As though I were the first person to ever have a baby, I still wonder at the bigness of it, the miracle. It was the most important job I’ve ever had, growing a baby. And the experience of birth still seems surreal. I know people do it again and again, but it will never minimize itself. And then, suddenly, you are a parent. And nothing else matters as much as that. What happened? One day I was playing kickball on the playground, trying to grow up and find a place for myself in this gigantic, nonsensical world. Now I am raising a person, trying to make sense of it for both of us.

When Maddie was younger she would tell me that she didn’t want to grow up because she didn’t want to leave her daddy and I. I assured her that even when she was a grandma herself, that she would always be my baby. She didn’t get it. But I do. First I had her with me day and night, then I sent her out into the world to her first other touches, sights, sounds. As though I’m the only person who’s ever done this before. It’s totally amazing. My miraculous little girl.