My Baby Girl

Have I ever told you the story about how my daughter came to be about?  Grab a cup of coffee or tea and pull up a chair. 

I have been blessed to be given her as a daughter.  She has taught me some things about myself.  But most importantly, she is my first born and my precious little girl.

My husband and I got married in 1998 because I was pregnant.  I was about 5 weeks pregnant.  The weekend after we got married we were able to take a little honeymoon to Ocean Shores.  It was there that I started spotting.  I had a feeling in the pit of my gut what was wrong. 

I don't want to tell that story though. 

After my miscarriage, we waited the three months to try again.  But God had different plans for us.  I sometimes wonder if that first pregnancy was just to get us in gear to get married.  We were living in sin. 

I didn't get pregnant until about five years later.  That was a tough five years!  I wanted to have a baby.  When I finally gave up, I told myself, "God has decided that you aren't to raise children, so just get used to the idea and get over it."  (Yea, I know, I have no idea about what God decides, but it sounded good at the time.) 

You can probably guess what happened after that.  BAM!  I was preggers. 

Five months into my pregnancy, I can feel that baby moving all of the time.  She hardly stopped.  It was crazy!  I used to call her my little ballerina and my tiny dancer because it felt like she was dancing on my uterus.  And it just kept going and going!

When I was in my third trimester, we were able to sit up at night and watch her just roll and roll and roll and roll and roll and roll (I think you get the point) in my stomach.  Literally, roll.  Not just kick or punch.  Roll.  She was an acrobatic in-utero baby! 

Then she was born.  That day my heart knew what it felt like to melt.  It took me years to just believe that this was really happening to me.  I thought all of the time, this has to be a dream.  Something this miraculous and sweet couldn't be happening to me.  She was my life.

Because of difficulties when she was born, she had to be in the ICU for babies inside one of those things.  I can't for the life of me think of what they are called now.  They wouldn't let me hold her as much as I wanted so she could stay at the right temperature.  I treasured my nursing times with her so I could marvel at the wrinkly face and puggy nose looking at me. 

She ended up having to stay one more night at the hospital than I did.  Because I was nursing, and not going to leave her there anyways not matter what they did to me, they let me stay in a little room for new parents whose babies had to stay longer.  It was no bigger than a closet, but she didn't know.  I remember trying to wrap her in a blanket, swaddling her lovingly.  Only for her to push and shove her way out of it in seconds. 

In a way it was comical.  I showed Greg.  "Watch, I'll wrap her up and she'll get out of it."  I wondered how I would keep her warm.  I still do!  She still won't stay covered up and the less clothes she has on, the better.

There has not been another moment in my life like that.  She stole my heart from the very beginning.  I love my son, and he is my cuddle-bug and my baby.  But nothing can take the place of your first born.