On this day one year ago, I was anxiously awaiting my weekly appointment with my obstetrician. It was a Tuesday, and I was 6 days past my due date with my first child. My blood pressure had started creeping up over the weekend; and though it wasn't really dangerously high, I had high hopes that my doctor would go ahead and induce labor.
A quick examination made clear that I probably wasn't going to go into labor on my own anytime soon. However, as I had hoped, my elevated blood pressure bought me a ticket to labor and delivery. The plan: Thin my cervix over the course of the evening and induce labor the next morning. Well, as we all know, the plan had to be B-planned in favor of a c-section. At 10:51pm on Tuesday, November 8, 2011, Molly was born.
She was a mere six pounds and six ounces, her head fitting easily in the palm of my hand. She cried like a cat, mewing to let us know that she was cold or hungry or just tired. She looked like any one of the 14 babies my sisters had borne over the previous 26 years, but this one was mine.
The other night, my husband sat on the couch and remembered the evening. We each had very distinct experiences. Mine was full of anxiety and loneliness. The surgery into which he wasn't allowed until they were literally making the incision, the quick peek at the baby, the shuffling off of my husband and child to the nursery while I remained on the table, the recovery room where the poor nurse had not a single bit of information to answer my questions about my daughter (weight? length? health?)--all these things came together to leave me feeling sad and alone on the greatest night of my life.
My husband, on the other hand, was assaulted on all fronts by feelings of worry (for me), overwhelming joy, and absolute fear. I doubt he had ever held a baby so small, but there he was being commanded to carry this tiny, precious infant down a hall and into the nursery. "Do this...hold that...take a picture of this...do that." All the while, he was wondering about me and trying to hold off my parents. (While I was wondering and asking all my unanswerable questions about Molly, my husband was doing to same about me.)
It wasn't until about 2am that we all came together as a family of three in the quiet and dark of a hospital room. I'm sure my husband and I spoke, but I don't remember what we said. It's not as important as what wasn't said anyway.
We spent four days in the hospital before coming home. (My blood pressure took its sweet time coming back down.) Once home, my parents stayed for not quite a week before leaving us to get on with our lives alone. Together. The three of us.
I distinctly remember rocking this tiny creature in an easy chair in the middle of the night thinking, Don't take this for granted. Soak it in. In a year, you'll wonder how you got so far so fast. For weeks, months, I tried to burn moments into my brain. And for a while, time seemed to be working with me. Days didn't drag, but they didn't pass quickly either. But then somewhere along the line, routines became, well, routine. Days began to pass with increasing speed, and moments became tangled up with laundry and dishwater and formula. Nine months spilled over into ten, which melted into eleven; and suddenly, that tiny baby whose head fit so wonderfully in the palm of my hand was a year old.
It's so cliche to wonder how time passed so quickly. What mother hasn't asked where the year went? I don't know what to say but that despite my best intentions, time slipped through my fingers. And it's so depressing to know that in exactly one year, I will be asking that same question again--Where did the time go? No matter how hard I try, I can't make it slow down. I can't make myself commit to every single moment. I can't stop Molly from growing and changing, sometimes--quite literally--overnight.
But at least I have this: Even as I sit here typing this, I can hear my baby girl crying like a cat as she wakes up from her afternoon nap, just like she did on that first night one year ago.
