first look

Not sure what invited them, but I spent lots of time this weekend visited by memories of the first time I laid eyes on my children.
These are memories one imagines you'll always have, how on earth could I forget those first adrenalin-fueled, surreal, painful, magical, weird moments? But I've started feeling paranoid that I might.

The present version of my girls always takes up so much space in my world that I can't think they're not all branded onto my memory. But the mind is not as reliable as the heart in this case, and as life starts moving faster and faster (Sunday will be 2 next month!) I find myself folding over the corners of our days, desperately trying to bookmark moments, words, feelings before we finish this chapter.

So to go back to the beginning ...

Both my births were emergency C-sections, so both my first looks were over the green curtain of surgery, both were through the disembodied (literally) haze of spinal blocks. I met my girls in the company of a half dozen strangers, strange masked half-faces hovering in my periphery, voices in the background, machines and strange smells.
And of course their Dad, present for both, his face on my right an enduring memory, one which I have no fear I'll ever forget.

Friday's birth, being my first, was still all about me. The decision to Caesar was made so fast, the adrenalin from my water's breaking and labour starting (3 weeks early) still coursing within me, my brain still holding the complete unknown at bay, that when they held her up over the curtain - impossibly quickly - I couldn't process what I was looking at.
This tiny (3.2 kg) purpely thing - what was it? Had they removed an organ I wasn't aware of?

I stuck out one finger and touched her. So warm. And then she opened her mouth, impossibly wide, and shrieked - and became a person.
She was taken to be cleaned and weighed etc. Her Dad went with her and although I couldn't see her face from where I was lying, the enormity of her was written all over his.
I looked down at my finger, still goo-ey from touching her, and wiped it on the edge of the surgical blanket.

Hours later, alone in my hospital bed, her asleep in the nursery across the hall, I rubbed my feet together and felt like her. It's not really possible to describe, I refuse to bow to the corny 'my heart walked outside my body' sentiment, but I felt like her. A part of me was, I guess, apart from me.
The next morning my husband told me that in our bed at home he'd felt the same.

For Sunday's birth I knew to expect an actual person at the end of it. The process, although also being my first real experience of labour, was so much more about her - namely getting her out safely. As we were attempting VBAC we knew there was the possibility of complications and ten hours in, when her heart rate started dipping and we were heading into theatre, I was overwhelmed with excitement at meeting her.

It was a difficult Caesar and it felt like forever before she appeared over the curtain, much paler, much bigger (3.8 kg) than her sister, one eyeball rolling wildly.
Although she'd been in distress I was allowed to hold her briefly and apparently, as she was handed to me, I said, 'Aw, let's have another one' to my husband - the anesthetist reckoning that was the soonest he'd ever heard the sentiment expressed, and not one I've ever repeated since!

Sunday was born in the morning (Friday late at night), and I think that's part of the reason those first 24 hours have so much more clarity. She hardly left my side, she latched well, we co-slept, I handled the pain meds better.

Friday's birth was a massive experience, on every level. It rocked me physically, emotionally, it rearranged the foundation of my life.
Sunday's entry (while my doctor would disagree) was somehow so much more peaceful. She slipped out of my body and onto the crook of my left arm. She slotted into an anticipated space in our lives, and that life went on, fuller and richer.

I need to remember this. I write it to remember it.