Thursday, January 18, 2018

When You Finally See and Hold Your Baby

According to my Facebook Memories, on this date in 2010, I shared that I was "getting more and more tired and uncomfortable with every week." I was 32 weeks gestation.

My friend Bex commented on that post and said, "when you finally hold Lily in your arms you will forget all the discomfort. :) <3"

I responded and told her I was sure I would and how excited I was. I told her I had an appointment that morning and that everything was going well.

Along the same lines, I remember my mom telling me while I was laboring through the night, hours before arriving at the hospital, that I should picture Lily's face through the contractions... the sweet face I'd imagined countless times before. She said that would help me get through the pain, focusing on the beauty to come after the pain of labor and birth.

And it did help. All the physical pain was suddenly erased when my daughter came into this world and I gasped with awe over her beauty and the perfection of every detail of her. 

In birthing her, I was able to do something tangible as her mommy, and that is a gift. The emotional pain of what I was facing for the rest of my life far outweighed the temporary physical pain.

When I finally saw and kissed her sweet face, it was all worth it... all the months of morning sickness, the aches and pains, and stretch marks, and the labor. 

When anticipating birth and holding her for the first time, I never could have imagined what that would entail or that her heart would have ceased. I never imagined those little eyes would never gaze back. 

When you're pregnant, you often hear things along the same lines of "it'll all be worth it when you go home with your precious new baby." But not all of us do. You don't envision as a mother with a healthy baby and pregnancy that the months of nurturing them in the womb and laboring for them to be birthed will result in a tiny coffin and leaving the hospital with less than you came.

Yet that was my reality and as painful as it was and is... Seeing her face was worth it. Holding her was worth it. Visiting a headstone all these years has been worth it. Choosing life is worth it. Loving her is worth it. ðŸ’—


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