Pregnancy, Childbirth and Early Parenthood

Ahhh... pregnancy! Rough the first 4 months, had a blast the following 4 and felt like a huge sack of potatoes walking around in month 9. I remember telling my unborn child at the time to hurry it up and come out already.

I was one of those moms-to-be who needed to know what was going to happen and how it was going to happen before it actually happened. I had it all worked out, Mohan and I wrote a 'Birth Plan' and submitted it to our doctor and the maternity staff ahead of time... basically I would go into labor, we'd head to the hospital all calm and collected, and I'd have a wonderful natural delivery where the doctor hands me my beautiful baby boy the instant he's out and I'd be an instant mommy without ever being apart from my baby boy... PERFECT! Too perfect.

Well, a couple of false alarms later we found ourselves once again in an all too familiar labor room with staff who seemed like they'd known us forever ("ahh.... these amatuers again. It's their first baby probably another false alarm", they must've thought initially). Everything was going according to plan, labor was progressing nicely, the doctor 'broke the bag' to speed up labor... and then it happened not 30 seconds later a state of emergency... my lil' baby needed to come out straight away... "don't worry", they said, "we'll look after you and the baby"... I was whisked off to the OT where an emergency C-section was performed.

After I came to and the anesthetic bagan to ware off... I was finally reunited with my baby... he was already out but i still felt and looked like a sack of potatoes. Yes, we were finally parents... you don't really instantly feel like a mommy or a daddy. It even feels weird at first referring to yourself as a parent. It's been 6 months now and I finally feel like a 'mommy'... he can't speak yet but he does express his diaproval of his gran's efforts at consoling him when he's sleepy by crying and calling out 'ma'. Oh, I love that boy to bits, he sure knows who his momma is... so proud I am of him.

Well, the moral of the story is have a plan, always have a plan but know that when the time comes there's always a 5% chance things may not go quite as planned and that's okay... the experience for me was still just as fantastic as if I'd had a natural birth.