Baby Mine

I can’t believe my youngest is already eight. It seems like just last week that I was laying on a hospital bed, waiting for him to leave my body already. I'd come to the hospital early in the morning, not sure that the baby was going to come—and excited to get to see if I was in labor. But then, after a dozen hard contractions, I was pushing. It was like the baby got a turbo boost and decided to come out after all. When my nurse asked if I could walk across the hall to the delivery room, I said “Sure, why not?” I had never had that short of labor before. It seemed like a good idea at the time. When that first push didn’t work, she asked me if I could push more. “What the heck,” I replied nonchalantly. I was too cocky, you see, from having given birth without drugs the first and second time around. Little did I know that a posterior baby can send you reeling through a black hole of pain and confusion so deep and dark, that you think you’ll never make it out the other end alive. I would have asked for an epidural when the pushing kicked in, but I couldn’t even speak, only scream. I was pretty sure that I was dying. And there came a point that I wished I would, just so the pain would stop.

“You can do this,” my doctor encouraged me as he crouched at the end of the table, watching my progress. I stared at him as my body writhed and the baby rammed its head against me. “Ahhh!” I screamed back. And I meant it. The kids' head felt huge—much bigger than I could manage. But the baby wouldn’t listen to that nonsense, and at last he came out. He was beautiful, long and lithe. And his head was ginormous.

As I held him in my arms, he looked up at me with wonderment, like someone had just turned on the lights while he was in a deep sleep. I smiled at him. Then I looked at my husband and he said, “I never want to put you through that again.”

And I won't. Not for eight years now, and not ever. Still, sometimes I miss holding a baby. Sometimes I miss the feel of a tiny hand in mine, the whispy hair against my cheek, and the fuzzy little footsy jammies. Maybe that's why I was willing to crawl into bed with my youngest last night when he asked me too. I held him in my arms, remembering all those nights when he was an infant and it was just me and him, sitting and rocking in a dark room. He is so much bigger now. His hand is no longer tiny, his hair is so curly, and he tells me he doesn't like footsy pajamas any more. I guess what my mother said is true. They do grow up fast--so fast that sometimes I want to give them a speeding ticket. I've waited so many years for them to not need me so much. But as it turns out, I want them to slow down, now. I want them to hop in my car and drive in the slow lane for many more years to come.

My son turned his body to face mine. I stroked his hair as he breathed quietly. Light from the street lamp outside his window fell on the bed in a pattern of lines, illuminating the star wars characters on his bedspread. From across the street I could hear a scraping sound, our neighbor removing her garbage can from the street. I heard the careful closing of a car door, then the low hum of the engine as she pulled out of her driveway. "Do you want me to leave?" I asked my youngest son. His eyes flickered open, looked at me, then closed.

"No, stay," he said through a yawn. I smiled to myself. Then I pulled him closer and rocked him to sleep.