Oops, I changed the title of this post right before publishing and didn't realize it then didn't make sense. Sorry! The quick question is: What went through your mind when holding your baby for the first time?
Honestly, the first thing I thought was “Holy s**t, this is an ACTUAL BABY. What have I done? I’m not qualified for this!”
My next thought was “Wow, she’s so much bigger than I thought she’d be!” People (myself included, I guess) go on and on about how tiny newborns are, so I was expecting her to be smaller. Plus, they laid her on my chest, up close to my face right away and all the screaming and wiggling made her seem bigger. I could not believe this much baby had just come out of me. Who knew there was that much room in there? (and she was only 7 lbs 1 oz!)
When Paul was born, my first thought was “It’s over? Really? He’s not in there anymore?” He came REALLY fast and for the rest of the night I had to keep reminding myself I wasn’t still pregnant.
With Kalena I felt a lot like you did- I'm not qualified! I don't know what I'm doing! It felt especially bizarre because she had to be on oxygen when she was born, so even though she was born Sunday evening, the first time we were allowed to hold her was Tuesday morning. Before that we just looked at her in the bassinet under oxygen.
ReplyDeleteWith Will it was way different. (I'm sure a VBAC vs an emergency C-section made a difference here.) Much more- Here you are! So good to meet you!
See, with Ren, my first thought actually was about how tiny he was!
ReplyDeleteI had a c-section, so I didn't get to hold Hannah for a couple of hours. All I could feel was relief--up to the end, I was so sure something was going to happen, but she was there, and she was perfectly alive and robust. That quickly shifted to giddiness to actually be holding her. It was amazing.
ReplyDeleteI too had a C-section, and they knocked me out after they took Lorelai to the nursery because I was so upset about not getting to hold her right away that I was crying too hard for them to get me stitched up. So when I woke up, I fought the fog that tried to drag me back to sleep and just kept saying, "Where is my baby, give me my baby, I need my baby" over and over until they brought her to me. When they handed her over, FINALLY, I was so relieved to actually have her in my arms that instead of the "holy crap, now what?" that I'd expected to feel, all I could think was, "Yes. This."
ReplyDeleteI had the exact same thing with my second, she was 2 weeks early and came super fast and it took a long time for my brain to get used to the idea.
ReplyDeleteI think with Ezra, the first thing I thought was, "OH LORD! This is a forever-thing!" Not like we were going to return him or anything...but, yeah. He was staying. Heh.
ReplyDelete