Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
Here is my baby, fresh from my womb. Her cheeks are swollen and bruised, as purple as waxy plums. Her eyelids are puffy, as if waterlogged. Her dark hair is plastered to her crumpled forehead and her body is slicked with a creamy sludge of vernix. She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
I breathe her in. I kiss her on the temple and hold her to my breast. We are both battered and exhausted. “This is the best”, I beam. The best. The best. A delirious flood of happiness and relief drowns out pain and I barely notice the needle in my thigh; the doctor pressing down hard on my belly; the pull as my placenta is drawn out of me. Her placenta – not mine. In this moment I exist only to nourish and protect my baby. Her umbilical cord, shiny and translucent and thicker than I imagined, connects us still.
In the first moments of her first and only life her wise, grey, been-here-before eyes stare at me knowingly. I want to tell her that the world is not this white, fluorescent place, hard-edged and temperature controlled, with windowless walls keeping nature out. I want to take her home to her brother and sister and the comfort of home. I want to take her outside and see her smile up at the sky. I want to hear her tiny chortle as she delights in the sight of dancing leaves.
She presses her clenched fist into her purple cheek and tries to nuzzle it. I notice the fine fur on her shoulders and wonder how my body could have conjured something so miraculous. Everything has gone well and I know I’m one of the lucky ones. I can’t believe my luck. So lucky. So lucky. I am overwhelmed by pure gratitude and I tell myself I must never forget this.
The midwife is asking me for the spelling of my baby’s new name but my mind is love-barmy and I can’t recall the proper order of the letters – even though her name is something I have pondered for hours, turning it around in my mind, wondering how well it would fit the new being growing inside me, hoping it would please her and somehow make her special. I am staring at her full lips and the profile of her nose. We are imprinting on each other and the world has shrunk in around us.
She is a kilogram, heavier than my other babies were and I can feel that she has more covering on her bones. Although tiny, her body feels robust. I am comforted by her substance, the tangible weight in my arms. Love floods me as she suckles her first milk. I have always loved her. By the time she was conceived I had already loved her for a million years. Now I know why miscarriages are so painful. The doctor presses on my belly, this time making me flinch and protest. She is mine, I think. This is the best. So lucky. So lucky.
What must it have been like for my grandmother? What must it still be like for women in undeveloped countries giving birth without access to medical care? What must it feel like when you can’t keep the baby or when things don’t go to plan? “It doesn’t bear thinking about” says the midwife. I hold my new baby girl and know that I am one of the lucky ones. I can enjoy this moment without fearing I am bleeding to death. I am not too spent to hold my baby and I am confident in her strength; confident she is healthy. I am able to keep her. She is peacefully sleeping now, as though nothing has happened. But she has been born. She is where she belongs.