Tatum

I know we all feel this way about our children, but for the past couple of months I’ve been overwhelmingly surprised by how intense my emotions really are when it comes to this little girl in our home.

When I found out I was pregnant I was panicked and distraught. Very distraught. I couldn’t imagine another person in my life, I felt stretched too thin, like I couldn’t take care of all the needs in my little world already.

Then we found out we were expecting a little girl. I wasn’t surprised, but panic levels escalated a little. The pregnancy was harrowing to say the least. I was immobile, impossibly plump, too stubborn and too poor to buy clothing to fit my expanding body. I think I wore two pairs of pants the entire pregnancy, and on the third day they would finally be perfectly comfortable, but then hygiene would insist I wash them and they’d shrink up again. I hated that cycle.

Anyway. Her birth was miraculous. Quick, intense, shocking. I squeezed my eyes shut the entire time and missed it. The whole thing was endurance for me. The quickest, longest 20 minutes of my entire life. But then she was there, being laid on top of me, round swollen face, swollen eyes, button mouth, and slippery. I looked at her and I wanted her off me.

How horrid is that? My first reaction to my daughter was not the instant bonding I felt with my sons. I didn’t look at her and feel like I knew her. She was a stranger, and an unhappy one at that. And I was tired.

And that’s how the first three months were. Was it post partum? I had never experienced anything like that. I loved her, more than I can say. I loved her soft squishy head, her eyes too big for her face, but I felt like she belonged to someone else and I was just borrowing her, and for heaven’s sake when was this babysitting jig up?

Over the past few months something has changed. She has completely become mine. I’m seeing her, and she is beyond fantastic. I want to hold her and squeeze her and look at her all the time. This is how it’s supposed to be, and whatever that horrible fog was, I’m glad it’s over. This is the mom I’m supposed to be, and this is the girl I’m suppose to have, and the sister my boys belong to. She has rounded us out more perfectly than I could have imagined. And all the worries and stress are gone, because it’s not about how I can do this with her, but how I can’t imagine doing it without her.