filled with love

OMG, I am so filed with love. Perhaps overfilled with love, it keeps spilling out. Your dad always keeps giving me more reasons to love him more but you have opened me to that, until now, unknown kind of love. I just came back from the vaccination, I loved you when you cried and hurt with you and it really really hurt me when you felt the pain. You see the other person I love with no limits is your dad and I feel bad for him when he doesn’t feel good, I feel sympathetic and I want him to feel better, I am sad about his pain but I do not suffer with him.

With you it’s so different. I would so much rather feel your pain instead of you and it hurts me too. And I love you

Then I love you again when you stop crying and are being really brave and strong, then I hold you and you snuggle up to me, put your head on my breast, turn towards me so no one else can see your face. I love you again.

Your dad said he keeps falling in love with me over and over again each day and sometimes I ask him so today? And he tells me yes, several times and I ask when and sometimes there are the most funny or peculiar reasons I would never think could make anyone fall in love with me but he says it makes him fall in love again.

I don’t know if you can fall in love with your baby but I experience these waves of love all the time. Then I love you again when you laugh to all the ladies at marcus’s office, wrinkle your little nose and they can’t believe that you just came back from your vaccination – you are not moody or crying, you are just happy little you, curious and beautiful

Then I put you on the floor of the car on the blankets your dad spread. We didn’t take your chair and I was picking up the car from his work so we had to come up with a way to drive you. And you are happy there and smile to me and I love you again and I love you when you fall asleep. I didn’t want to wake you up when we came back home. Now there is high tide and I could sneak pout for a little swim but I prefer to write this because there was so much love in me I had to spread it out and I am thinking I am crazy, when ever before I would have miss a swim in the lagoon to talk to someone and here I don’t even talk to you, I just write for you to read it, probably years and years down the road.

Well, love is strange and crazy. Can’t wait to talk to you, soon I hope you will be able to talk back. You seem to understand so much now and you know now about object permanence, when we hide something from you, you know it is still there, you look behind, you try to get to it. You also realise if something is too far for you to reach but as soon as something comes within your reach you will surely get you hands on it. And you are not even 6 months old yet.

Now I just can’t wait till you wake up, can’t wait till your dad comes back home!

Love you and this makes me so so happy

 

 

We woke up and …we were a family

It was a hard labour. There was a lot of pain with first contractions already 3-4 minutes apart, lasted for 16 hours.  We woke up at 2, drove to the hospital at 4.30 when the pain started becoming unbearable.  I went straight into the delivery room and from then onwards, apart from one quick visit to the bathroom, Marcus stayed with me holding my hand kissing my forehead, stroking my back, for 12 or 13 hours non stop, all that time standing not minding pain in his feet, not minding discomfort, all he worried was me and that he cannot take this pain away that there is so little he can do. But he made a world of difference. I can’t even imagine how it would be without him I know at some point he cried and said something so unbelievably beautiful but I couldn’t remember his words later, I just remember his beautiful face full of concern and love and mix of pain and pride.

Some people from his work and Dion came to visit, someone let them into the delivery room and i saw them in between my contractions but this is all a haze, I knew they brought words of encouragement and mountain of gifts.

Then the time came to push. People say you forget the pain…it was not the pain though that I will remember, it was a terror and fear for my baby and  I don’t think I will ever forget this. I was exhausted and though, after last medication, my contractions became shorter and less painful it meant I now had  shorter windows to push.

During the next hour I tried  over and over again, giving everything from myself, making inhuman almost efforts but still it was pointless and i felt so helpless. And there was marcus always there, reapiting quiet words of love, reassuring me, my husband, your dad, waiting for you to come to this world and being there for both of us.

Whatever I was doing, after a short success when the baby’s head appeared at the opening, I could not get the baby out. Something was wrong.  I cried and screamed in pain by then, I was scared, I felt I am failing my little baby. Marcus’s constant reassurance and his hand stroking my face was the only thing I could hang on to not to break. I had no more strengh on my own, the only strength i was now getting from him.

There were two midwifes and two doctors with us. The Burmese doctor looked like a graduate in his katmandu jumper, the other one was wearing a t-shirt with a sign picturing a married couple titled “game over”. Midwives Tai and Tauvaine tried hard to direct me to push more effectively. With my legs prompt on their hips I did push as hard as I could,  I felt a ring of fire down there, there was pressure in every muscle, in felt like the skin is tearing yet there was no more progress.   I had no more strength to scream or cry.

One hour of sweat and pain passed and the head was still in the same place. Now everyone was getting stressed.  ‘you have to push the baby out. We don’t have much time, we have to get her out now, she was too long there, push, try” “Don’t you think I am trying, do you think I want to keep her there?? Like I don’t want her out?” I cried now in frustration and by now also in a panic myself not knowing what is gonna happen to my baby if I don’t succeed right there and then.  Dr Linn decided he will help me with the suction cap. everything inside me felt raw but all that mattered now was to get the baby out.

Then there was a painful injection bursting under the skin of my vagina, doctor saying he will have to cut me and use the forcipes, things bursting and tearing and pain.

Despite the injection an i felt unbelievable pain when the heavy clumps were pushed inside even though I felt almost dead inside, paralised  with fear that those cold hard things are now closing around my baby’s head to pull her out of me.  I pushed with all my power when the doctor said he was ready, determined to save pain to my baby girl. “i can’t see how you could push that hard when the doctor had to pull with all his strength and it was still damn difficult to pull the head through even though you were not cut open” said marcus later.

With me pushing and the doctor pulling the little head  finally popped out just like a cork from a well corked bottle of wine. A limp little body followed a couple of moments later and I just prayed for that baby scream

I don’t remember much after I felt little slippery body being put on my breast, tears of fear and pain and unbelievable joy and release. Someone asked Marcus of he wants to cut the umbilical cprd, someone handed the baby to him, he was next to me hugging me, someone took the baby to weigh and put in a warm place, I asked Marcus to go and see her and tell me everything is ok. I don’t know how I got to bed who attached the drip onto my arm, I just remember being in Marcus’s arms, the nurse bring  the baby and me holding this beautiful little person in my arms, with Marcus’s arms around me, both of us stroking in amazement little head watching that pretty dear little face pressing to my breast  when the baby starts sucking. Suddenly our lives changed and opened up to that completely new kind of love, unknown until then. That very moment I knew I will always, always love her. I saw love in Marcus’s eyes, both to me and the baby, all so overwhelming. I don’t know when I fell asleep, I know the baby was in the cot next to us and Marcus put her on my breast again some time at night and when we woke up sudenly….we  were a family