Birthdays, Birth Days

I wrote this forever ago but never got around to actually doing anything with it. I hope it makes some small amount of sense.

*****

Since it's nearing their birthdays, I've been thinking a lot here lately about the kids' births and how they were so incredibly different and what that means now. And while I'm not one of those people who want to do the whole re-creation of birth since they feel as though they were robbed of it, I completely understand being disappointed in how the birth of your child went. (Obviously, I'm not disappointed in the general outcome of either of my kids' births, as they're both healthy kids, for which I am unspeakably grateful.)

Will's birthday was not ideal, to say the least. Since he was a month early, the last thing I was expecting was to have a baby that afternoon. (Truth be told, what I was really planning as I was waiting on my doctor was what I was getting from the Taco Bell drive thru as soon as I left the doctor's office.) I had been sent home from the hospital the day before (and promptly parked myself at a table at the nearby Olive Garden as soon as they were finished monitoring me) as one of those women who I said I'd never be: the false alarm woman.

But suddenly the alarm was no longer false and, before I could really catch my breath, he was there. I felt like I had just watched a movie about someone else having a baby instead of actually having a baby myself. I didn't get to hold him until nearly five hours after he was born, which seems completely crazy to me now. Of course, the delay didn't diminish my overwhelming love and the almost crazily primal urge to protect him. But we had trouble with breastfeeding, with supplemental feeding systems and pumping being mentioned less than 24 hours after his birth.

I had only just had him and I felt like I was already a failure (way to go nurses and lactation consultant-mission accomplished!). It wasn't the greatest start, not by a long shot. What I would do now to have those hours to do over. I feel like I could've done so much better for him. For us. I was just so completely clueless and didn't even know that I should have stood up for myself a little bit better (or stood up for myself at all, more accurately). I only breastfed him for six months with the last few weeks of those six months being a battle involving a bit of force on my part, which I blame partly on his first few days of life and what went on then and partly on myself and my inexperience and lack of knowledge. And, if I'm really honest, it's also due to the fact that breastfeeding is really effing hard. There's really no two ways about it. It just is.

This time around, though, I certainly felt more present for Laura's birth, mainly because the first 12 hours of it were punctuated with regular, rather acutely painful reminders of her imminent arrival. My doctor was so laid-back about her birth throughout my whole pregnancy that I just sort of trusted that things would go well. And they did. (When we were talking at an appointment fairly early on in my pregnancy about a VBAC and my chances and so forth, I told him that I really wanted to avoid another c-section but that I also wanted to be realistic since I knew things didn't always work out the way you plan them. His response to me, and I'll never forget this, were these exact words: "But sometimes they do." And I know it sounds silly, but at that moment I knew that (a) I had chosen the right doctor and (b) things would work out in the end. I was right about both of those things.)

In any case, I held Laura immediately. I got to look at her with all her new-baby stickiness  and talk to her and have the kind of experience that any new mother deserves. A few minutes later, she latched on like it was something she had done for years. From our first few minutes together, I had complete confidence in her and in myself and that hasn't waned in the ten months she's been here. (Also, she'll be eleven months old Monday [what the?] and we're still going strong on the breastfeeding front. Such a difference this time around...)

While no parent, regardless of how with-it they appear, never really has it all together all the time, the second time is so much easier. Laura hasn't always been exactly an easy-going baby but I've never felt the sheer panic we felt with Will, like we were making life-altering decisions on at least an hourly basis, decisions that could change the course of his entire trajectory through life because we didn't feed him the oatmeal with the DHA added to it. Please. We shined (shone?) our only-child spotlight just a little too brightly for just a little too long on him, I fear. Oh well. You know what they say about hindsight.

*****

I cleaned out our closet the other day. The maternity clothes stayed, as did the bouncy seat and co-sleeper. I just couldn't get rid of them. I'm not ready yet. I'm not saying we're having another baby. But I'm not saying we're not, either.

*****

Sometimes things go the way you plan. But sometimes they don't.