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was even born. I didn't care. She must know that she was loved and wanted long before I could hold her and she could see all those things in my eyes that my feeble words could not express.

In the birthing suite, I begged my doctor to let me push more because I couldn't wait to see her. We laughed and cheered as I pushed and pushed, trying to get her here as quickly as possible. My doctor, a wonderful Christian woman, compared my labor and delivery to a football game where the fans were thrilled their team was winning.

"Come to Momma," I told her, reaching as far as I could for her, the moment she was born. "I love you. I have to tell you so many things."

I was teased by my sister-in-law that once my daughter was born, I would have nothing to say to her because I had already told her everything. That was not the case. I re-told her about Jesus and how much He loved her. I told her the story again about how her Daddy and I met. My doctor and the two nurses stood and watched as I, once again, tried to express all the feelings in my overflowing heart.

I cried as if my world had ended when her Daddy cut the umbilical cord. She was now a separate individual, her own little person to make it on her own - with my help, of course. I didn't know if I could ever have her be a part of me again. The one physical thing that kept us forever linked had been severed. Now, I explain to her about her belly button and what it means to us. She puts her tummy and against mine and we touch belly buttons. "We are still together," she laughs as she pushed her tummy against mine.

All of the bonding I tried to do with my daughter did have an immediate effect on her. My doctor gave her a nine out of ten points on her APGAR test because she wasn't born saying "I am the head and not the tail, above only and not beneath." She had heard me say that so many times as my daughter and I went for our check ups. "I am genuinely surprised that baby wasn't born talking," I heard my doctor tell my mother moments after I was holding my daughter for the first time. "I never knew a mom who talked so much to their unborn baby. I ran into her at the store once and that baby knew about everything in the cart."

The nurses had to wait to weigh and bathe her. Her daddy and I were too busy looking at her and talking to her to be bothered with the mundane details the nurses normally would have done immediately. It was part of the birth plan I had made with my doctor - as soon as she was born, I was to hold her and

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