A special day

I know many consider your first day of being a parent to be when you take the baby home from the hospital, but I consider my first day to be the day he was born. Here is my story.

My first day of being a parent was a special one. My husband(at the time) and I arrived at the hospital on base in the middle of the night. We had just gotten home from visiting family and had spent three days on a train. We check in and the nurse takes my vitals and hooks me up to some kind of monitor, which is wrapped around my big belly. The doctor comes in and does the exam to see how many centimeters I am dilated. At this point only one centimeter. It’s going to be a long night. Since I was on a military base and they have some weird rules, I had to be transfered to a different hospital. Oh boy I get to ride in an ambulance, while in labor, can’t wait. That was the worst ride ever.

We make it to the other hospital and I get rushed to a room and get hooked up to all sorts of machines and then more doctors come in and are checking me out. You would think my private area was famous. Finally it was time to push. I pushed and pushed but my son didn’t want to come out. Every time I pushed his heart rate would go down. I ended up having a c-section, which I didn’t want. My son was born at 14:52pm. I was knocked out for the c-section, so I didn’t get to see him until later that night, that was so hard.

After a long day I was finally ready to see my new bundle of joy. Since he was born about a month early he would be staying in the nicu until he was able to come home. The nurse wheeled me down in a wheel chair to see him and I was so overcome with joy I cried. I couldn’t hold him and I could barley touch him. I counted his fingers and toes, just to make sure they were all there. I remember thinking I can really do this? I don’t know anything about being a parent. I mean I did some babysitting when I was a teenager, but this is different. I knew my baby would be in the nicu a while, but I’m still his mommy and I love him more than anything. We stayed by his side everyday for two weeks, while he got strong enough to come home. My first time holding him was in the nicu, he was hooked up to wires and he was so small, I thought I would drop him. I didn’t drop him. I held him tight and sang to him and told him that I was his mommy and that I love him. After two weeks of being in the hospital he finally got to come home.

Inspired by the Daily Prompt.