sooooo
Have you ever been totally caught off guard by emotion?? One minute you’re thinkin’.. “Yah,,, whatever.. I’m cool”.. and then the next..BAMMMMMMMM BAMMMM BAMMM BAMMMM and you’re sitting there sobbing like a baby?? Ahhhh dreaded emotion. Happened to me last night, and totally unexpectedly…
So I’m sitting there in my parenting group, hosted by the wonderful Ann Brown. And mind you, I suffer from ADD or AADD (adult attention deficit disorder) … so one of the women in my group just had twins like three weeks ago…. Cutest little babies ever. So she’s there with her babies, amongst group, while talking and discussing the throws of parenthood, this poor woman is juggling her babies like a couple of balls. One is nursing, the other one is fussy because she’s still hungry, then when she’s done with that one, the other one goes on the breast, and the other needs his pants changed… I mean seriously, it was like the poor woman couldn’t even focus on the topics because she was pulled this way and a’that… And ,, since I’m one of those lucky ones that suffer from ADD (and I swear I’ve suffered from it since day one, and never have been medicated for it),, I was just totally INTO watching poor her multitasking and listening, and breastfeeding, and changing shitty pants, and then breast feeding again, and sucking down a cookie, and then a strawberry, and then going pee, and then drinking more water, then nursing again. So… point to my story… With all the women in the group, most of us took our turns holding the twin that didn’t “need” anything at that given moment. Now, I’ve always been intimidated by newborns. Even with my own kids, when they were newborns, I felt like they were foreign little aliens that would break if you looked at em. Just the newborn stage was enough to put me over the edge with anxiety. “What if I drop her?” “What if I push her neck too far and she’s paralyzed?”… just all the what ifs.. So some of the women had taken their turns holding them, but I just sort of watched, and witnessed all of them soaking in the glee of holding a newborn, and happily sat there w/out taking MY turn. So the woman next to me (whom I totally adore) was holding the little baby girl, Charlotte, and so I leaned over to her amidst her turn and said, “Pssst.. hey,, when you’re done,, I want to hold her.”… She agreed, and 4.7 mins later, she handed little sweet Charlotte over to me. First of all, the little protocols come a rushing back.. i.e. support the head/neck, don’t break em, are my hands clean?, oh holy geez this baby is so tiny. So I’m sitting there just soaking in every eye movement of this little baby girl, every twitch, every jerking hand movement, and then I notice that she’s getting fussy. So after taking cue to the bottle that this woman supplements her babies with in between feedings.. or rather, the bottle that she has to give one while she’s nursing the other to keep the peace and her sanity I’m convinced, I ask the chick next to me to give me the bottle, as it’s totally apparent that little Charlotte is about to root for my nasty coat.. So there I sit, completely neglecting the conversations around me, and I’m sitting there totally fixated on making sure that Charlotte is not sucking in too much air, and that I’m holding it correctly etc… and so she finishes the small amount in the bottle, and I put it down, and I pull her away from my embrace to burp her upright on my lap (the whole neck hold method),,, and at THAT moment, it hit me, square in the face that I would never again hold a baby that came from my body, from my womb, like that ever ever again. Backing up about a year and a 1/2, I had a hysterectomy in Sept of 2007 due to some serious female issues. And granted, I thought about it after I had the surgery that I would never be able to have a baby again, but never ever did I think it would affect me emotionally the way that it did at that very minute. The tears started to come, and I didn’t realize the gravity of them until they were full force dripping down my cheeks. I’ll never have a baby of my own again. I’ll never get to experience the miracle of childbirth, me and my husband are done pro-creating. I hadn’t held a newborn baby since my surgery until that minute last night. I wept inside and out…. I felt such a loss….. I felt so helpless, but yet at the same time, it felt so good to let it out, to cry. It was almost as if holding that little sweet baby helped me mourn the loss of my uterus….. it is gone… I’m sure everyone was like,, “What the hell?”…. but you just have to be there, in that position to know what I’m talking about. Such a final feeling. It was good. The mother stood up and apologized to me, as if she had caused my emotional tears, but I shushed her away, and just wanted to sit there and hold little Charlotte for another few minutes……… And finally when I wasn’t able to console her anymore, I handed her back to her mother who was sitting on the couch, and watched her kiss her forehead before she began to breastfeed, and I looked at her, and just thought,, “Wow…. you are one lucky woman”…..
January 30th, 2009 at 11:06 am
=)
February 1st, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Been there, done that. You have an emotional heart. I would love to have an Ann Brown around here.
February 5th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
I had a hysterectomy in December 07 and when my best friend had her little girl this last april I had that same moment at the hospital. Most days I am so very excited to see my kiddos grow up and leave the “baby” stages behind…we are potty training the youngest now…and love moving into the next stages. Some days though it makes me really sad…there is just nothing like conceiving, carrying, birthing and providing for your own flesh and blood and that of your dearest husbands.