From the very first moment, I pictured myself being there to witness the baby being born.
Immediately after my daughter had handed me a plastic Target bag saying she
“got something for me,” revealing two positive pregnancy tests inside
(as soon as I closed my mouth)
I started dreaming of being there to see my first grandchild’s face squinting for the first time into the light.
As the pregnancy went on, as much as I didn’t want to entertain it, I started to realize maybe my daughter’s wishes of how the delivery would go were slightly different than mine;
And so, one day in the car, I casually brought it up to see if I could catch a glimpse of her true wishes for how it would go in her eyes.
What became clear that day was that her thought was that it would just be she and her husband in the delivery room, with me waiting right outside.
I held in the part of me stifling a what-about-me-though cry, and told her whatever they wanted was, of course, what I would do.
For months I worked on making my own heart believe just waiting in the waiting room would be alright.
Not wanting to pressure her I kept to myself all of the things about labor that I knew.
My own mother had been with me through all four of my deliveries.
Her presence there had been invaluable.
There is something about the grip of a woman who knows exactly what you’re feeling that can’t be replaced by anyone.
That first moment with each of my girls was something that had cemented us even more firmly, and oh, how I wanted that cementing, too.
But, this was their moment.
I understood that.
This was their precious child.
Motherhood has taught me that if you want to maintain a good relationship with your children you often have to set your own self aside for their good.
I would just be in the waiting room if they needed me.
I probably said eight times, “If you need me, though, you just say the word.”
I worried so much over how my daughter would do.
I know her, and I also know what it’s like.
The feeling I had took me back to sleepless nights when her toddler head was hot with fever, and I’d be so worried about her that I’d make her a bed on the floor next to mine.
When the induction began, for three full nights I scrunched up on a small loveseat in the lobby of the hospital as her contractions grew stronger.
The family came and went, but there I stayed.
The janitorial staff and I became friends.
I didn’t care about a kinked neck and a diet of hospital food.
Late at night I’d roam deserted hospital hallways on my way to the bathroom, wondering if my girl was awake behind those double doors, too.
Everyone else in the family played games, and watched shows,
but I waited and held my breath.
I was loving that baby, sure, but my mind was fixated on my first little girl now laboring in room number seven.
She and her sisters were all born in that exact room.
When, after hours of waiting and watching the doors, a call came to my cell phone from her husband I nearly jumped out of my skin with worry about her.
“She’s OK,” he assured right away.
And then the words I will hold on to forever:
“Can you please come? She wants you.”
I cannot adequately describe the combined feeling of fear and elation that that call gave:
Like afterwards I directly teleported from there to her room.
She is grown up and married now, but I flashed back to when I was a single mother with her all alone in a hot upstairs apartment, wondering just what I was going to do.
I flashed back to when she first moved out, and I had cried as she packed up her coffee mugs, feeling like our life together was too quickly through.
But there I was, still needed and wanted, still called on, and still of use.
I don’t remember the walk to her, or being buzzed in.
I just remember her face as I opened the door to her delivery room and there she sat on the edge of the bed with fear in her eyes, saying the epidural had failed.
Her knuckles were white.
Her husband’s face was white, too.
When I reached her, she looked up at me, birth plan scrapped, and when her eyes locked on mine, she said, “I’m scared. I don’t know if I can do this.”
They were the same eyes of a little girl with a bob I once knew.
And then, for the thousandth time in her life, I took her hand, and I spoke over her my belief in her capability.
For the thousandth time I told her there was absolutely nothing that she couldn’t do.
“Honey, women have babies alone in streams in Africa. This is what your body was made to do. You may feel like you can’t do it right now, but I know that you can,
and I am going to be right here with you.”
At 12:52, on November 27th, Mavis Sophia entered this world as her mother’s hand gripped mine in a way that made if feel like time didn’t exist, and it was back to being just us two.
That hand in mine that I’d led up slides,
and into a kindergarten classroom,
and through wildfire smoke.
The baby came rushing, and I was the first one to see her face as she did;
A gift of a moment I will never forget.
A chain, unbroken, continued.
It was just like my vision of how it would be.
Music played as she came in a lowly lit room.
Mavis means “Songbird,”
and sing, she did.
She was born as her father and I stood on each side of her mother,
loving her; And both feeling in awe of what she just did.
I will never forget that she did want me there, after all.
As in so much of mothering,
I just had to be patient with it.
I had to get comfortable in the waiting room.
When it all came down to it, her own mother was the person she still turned to.
It just took me letting her know “Even though it is hard to lay my own wishes down, I choose yours.”
It feels a lot like that old adage about letting birds go, and seeing if they come back to you.
The last week has been a whirlwind of baby snuggles and family elation.
My cat, Seuss, is being replaced on my camera roll: Something I never thought could happen.
If you don’t think a person could have their picture taken 6000 times in 8 days, then you had better think again.
My friend asked me what becoming a grandma is like, and I told her it’s the same feeling you have on Christmas as a mom, when the only one who knows about the gift being opened is you. You watch with anticipation of your child’s response, waiting for the moment they recognize the reason for the joy you’ve been hiding.
You are waiting for them to understand that they now own a feeling that you previously only knew about.
You stand there and nod with your coffee mug and a smile, watching something priceless be passed down.
“It’s Christmas Day every day.”
That is how I described it to them.
In the week they have been home, my daughter has called on me multiple times, asking many things from breastfeeding questions to things like “how soon is too soon…”
I hope that my daughters always know they can call on me;
Forever in the waiting room.
All they have to do is say the word, and I’ll be right there beside them,
holding their hand,
and whispering about all the things I know they can do.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
