Becoming M'umma' !

For the 32 weeks that I carried you, I insisted at every doctors appointment that I was going to push you out and I would not 'allow' them to cut me up.

I labored for 18 hours but you had no intention of coming out. So I finally relented and asked for an Epidural - the minute they administered it through the pinprick in my spine, my hips down, it felt warm and buoyant and I thought finally I get to enjoy my labouring as well.

However, the minute my body relaxed, you also relaxed and I think all the warmth made you sluggish and you pooed inside - so within seconds it had become a tense moment where your heart rate had started plummeting. I was rushed into the OT, all along I kept thinking you were a boy and that you would fight back - but everything happened so fast, I felt that I had zero agency' during this time. I have never felt more helpless - intellectually and physically.

The only familiar presence in that cold/steel OT was your dad - they cut me up, I could hear so many non-sensical childish conversations of a bunch of new interns who were standing at my head, I could feel them take you out and I heard the feeblest cry from you - even the din from the AC seemed louder. I could feel the doctor tugging and pulling at my abdomen to stitch me back and then your father came next to my head and showed you to me, you were sleeping, all wrapped up, you were finally out in this world and oh my god - you were so beautiful, with the plumpest, pinkest lips that looked ready to pout.

I think 'we' fell in love together and I remember saying - o she is preeetty!

After that, once my anesthesia started wearing off, I remember crying uncontrollably - all the nurses and young doctors who were there could not understand and I was out of control - I cried and shivered as they shifted me out of the OT bed and trolleyed me back through the floors to my room.

I had an overwhelming sense of having failed you and your father because I could not push hard enough and chose the epi. But that night something else also occurred which has taken me 13 months to recognize and be thankful for.

Somewhere deep inside of me, there is a part that is superior, more evolved than the amateur, struggling flawed person that I am - and this place knows that I will be honest and true to you as we grow together. And you will see me fail so many times, but you will know that I will rise and I will teach you that!