Tonight I pulled my sweet smelling, dripping wet Aoife out of the bathtub, and she laughed and told me she was four years old.
"No, you're not", I told her, "I was there when you were born. It was one of the happiest days of my life. Tied for the happiest day of my life."
And I thought to myself, tied with Liam's birthday, but what about Charlotte's? How do I classify that?
It wasn't the happiest day of my life. My baby died in my womb, and I had to birth her to silence. It was a dark, grey, rainy day and I didn't know what to do with myself. I laid in the bed and dozed on the epidural which I gratefully accepted to try to numb the pain of my loss, hoping that some alleviation of physical discomfort might allow me to expand within to allow for the emotional roadwork that lay ahead. I felt dismal and cheated, numb and dissociated, and quite uncertain of what to expect in the coming hours. I needed to get away.
And then she was born, and the world as I knew it fell away like a curtain being snipped apart in little strips, because suddenly I was a mother and I knew about the secret mother love that nobody could ever truly put into words that could be understood. In that very moment of awful truth, when my baby emerged from my body and lay on my belly, lifeless, I fell in true love for the first time, and I felt joyful for having made such a beautiful creature, regardless of circumstance. I felt infantile in my delight in her tiny details, in my curiousity of her little body, in my passionate care for her whole self. The feeling that coursed through my veins as I held her and kissed her and came to know her as well as one could on that day was....
what was it?
was I happy?
I was not happy, because I was knowing that whole time that she was gone, and that she would leave me soon, and I could feel my heart welling and swelling in my chest and I knew that it was just on the cusp of breaking. But I was proud, I was so proud, and I was so full of love.
So it was not the worst day, either.
But what brings it up on the pedastal, back up there almost next to Liam's birth day and Aoife's birth day is this: If I could re-live one day of my life, I would relive that day, I would go back to May 13, 2003. And I know I could not change the outcome, and I know she would still be born without a cry. But if I could hold her again, and if I could kiss her tiny face another time, and hold her tiny fingers, I would, truly, be very, very happy.
7 comments:
This is stunning. And captures all of my same thoughts and so, so much more. Hope's birthday was not the best or worst day of my life, but it was certainly the most significant. And the day I learned all about love at first sight.
Thank you so much for writing about this so beautifully. I would go back, too, if I could.
This is such a beautiful tribute. I wish you could feel that happiness, I really do.
I do find it incredibly brave that you would revisit that day, knowing the toll and the outcome. I think Hope's Mama is right when she calls it the most significant day. Babylost mamas are made of stronger stuff than those of us who have never known it. We still fear the other shoe dropping while you are already on the other side.
Those are such precious words! It has been a long time since I've swallowed such grief in reading one of these now familiar stories. Grief that welled up from somewhere deep and touches for me personally exactly why I find our common motherhood such a powerful force
Ditto. That first moment with your child in your arms (regardless if he/she is breathing) is incredible. I would endure it all again to see/hold my precious boy.
This reminds me of Elizabeth McCracken's "this is the happiest story with the saddest ending". I, too, like thinking of it as the most significant day.
I would go back. I would go back and spend more time with him with him if I could. Bathe him, sing to him, look at his baby bum. I was coming out of anesthesia and so shocked and horrified and immobile from the surgery. I wish I had taken more time with him.
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