My water broke unexpectedly the night before Thanksgiving while I was on the phone with mom. The house was up for grabs; we were chatting while I tried to clean the kitchen. The water did not break in one spectacular gush. It was at first a small amount that I come have disregarded, and then more warm fluid escaped as I called the answering service for the Dr, finished packing my hospital bag, changed into my gown at the hospital, and entered the operating room. My water broke at 6pm; at 9:34pm, the doctors announced from behind the dividing curtain that our girl had arrived.
We had been engaged in a heated debate for weeks about whether to spell her name Madeline, Madeleine, or some other name because we simply could not agree. We settled on Madeleine, which was Nitin's preference. He misspelled her name in the announcement email we sent to family and friends and the pediatrician misspelled her name on her file. But it is the correct spelling for the pronunciation were preferred and it it is also a word for a delicate French cookie. So.
We had not chosen Ellie's middle name until just before surgery. We choose Lila, the Sanskrit word for play, over Amara and Amaya and a few other Sanskrit names beginning with A. Naming a precious child one has not met yet is a challenge -- out feels terribly important and yet I came to realize there was not necessarily a name that would check all of my boxes of feel completely right. There was no family name that we both loved that could belong to a Senator or a doctor or an artist that commands respect and yet feels approachable and offers a choice of affectionate, roll off the tongue nicknames. So we just did our best and picked a name we both really liked that had a number of decent nickname choices. An early lesson in parenting -- it is usually not practical to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Before we entered surgery -- six days before the planned c section for our breech baby, and ten days before our due date -- I asked the doctor if "this if probably going to turn out fine?" The medical team told me there had been ten c sections already that day. A lot of babies who had to be out in time for turkey, apparently. We had tried to flip Ellie -- prenatal chiropractor, acupuncture, moxibustion, inversions, handstands in the pool. Sometimes a baby will not turn because a nuchal cord is wrapped around her neck. Not so with our little one -- perhaps it was a matter of comfort? I can imagine not wanting to hang upside down for months, I suppose.
In the operating room, the wait for her arrival seemed endless. I had one moment of panic when I realized I could not move or feel my legs. Mostly I tried hard to focus on the arrival of our baby, rather than the grisly logistics. I wept when she arrived -- she's here, she's here. Nitin was composed, naturally; important for one parent, at least, not to be susceptible to hysteria.
She was coated in vernix -- that white cream cheese like substance -- and blood. She did not wail immediately. (I asked about her lungs -- not to worry, they said.) Her birth was the incredible culmination of an entirely mysterious process. Remarkably, with no forethought on my part, I had grown a perfect baby human with 10 long fingers and 10 long toes, and rosy sweetheart lips and an impossibly soft head coated in downy fuzz like a ripe peach. Almost immediately she was sufficed with the telltale newborn scent. When she rested on my bare chest the pain of the incision and claustrophobia of the hospital room faded.
Recovery from abdominal surgery is a painful slog. Lessons learned -- take the Percocet, the first few days are the hardest, and becoming a mother brings a deep and meaningful joy that far eclipses the temporary pain of childbirth.
And so I am now a mother to this incredible person. We are learning about her, and about infant care generally, each day. She emerged with a strong sucking reflex that surprised me; she also completely understood her destination. Just as they had in utero, her hands migrated toward her mouth at every opportunity. The days since her birth have flickered by so quickly and we are, of course, so in love with her that there is a desire to somehow capture every detail -- the sweet soft of her cooing in the midst of half-hearted crying, the moment when her gaze settles on me, the brow furrowed in contemplation.
I once read that in becoming a parent, one acquiesces to having the heart of oneself wandering around in the world, outside of one's body. The vulnerability is shattering.
All of this helps me to understand more my own mother's seemingly endless capacity for forgiveness and love without condition. As a child, I posed every type of hypothetical to test her love for me -- what if I was a murderer, I asked. She would be heartbroken by that, she said, but would still love me. I now understand this completely. Of course. Maya Angelou said she had become the type of parent her mother had been. Ellie and I would both be so lucky if the same were true for me. She deserves no less than that. What an incredibly precious gift, our beloved daughter.
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