by Ariel Stephens

Created on: August 26, 2009

With a flushed face, neck veins surfaced and gritted teeth I pushed. Labor started at 5 a.m. and lasted until 8:30 p.m. That 'urge to push' everyone had talked about for the past 8 1/2 months arrived and my son would soon take his first breath. December was ending and his due date was not until January.

My husband held one of my legs while a nurse held the other. Distant cries of "Push! Push!" surrounded me as I obeyed and clenched my sides with my fingers numb to any pain that came from it. Each push seemed to suck all the oxygen out of me while the room spinned. I didn't have anymore time to think about how to raise him, to breastfeed or bottle feed, to change the nursery color or how to tell him how silly little girls will be sometimes. The hospital staff hustled and bustled around the tiny room, prepping, cleaning, talking in their blue and white uniforms like something out of a movie. Breathing harder and harder each time, I wished I had bigger lungs.

Finally he arrived and his first cry of life filled the room. It's amazing how you feel both exhausted and exhilerated. Moments later, a baby boy wrapped in a yellow blanket arrived in my arms. His face scrunched, his fingers curled and purple, his head abundant with matted, curly hair and he looked like he favored my nose.

"Hi," I whispered to him and some of the nurses said, "Happy birthday baby boy!"

Who are you, I thought to myself. Will you like hockey like dad or books like mom? Will you be a picky eater? Will you be smart? What's your passion? What will your laugh sound like? If I knew the answers to these questions there'd be no point for him to be born.

A nurse gently lifted him from my arms and took him away. They dressed him in a pink and blue hat and swaddled his tiny frame in a blanket covered with baby footprints and rolled him into the nursery for evaluation.

I didn't like pregnancy, giving birth wasn't fine either, and I'm sure raising a little boy will serve it's share of challenges. Having your baby is one thing, filled with technicalities which is great. But giving birth involves so much more. While your baby is born into the world so are you as a mother. I don't know everything that entails because I haven't been a mom for very long. I do know, like pregnancy, you worry, you're tired and for some reason just when you think you have everything together there's just one more thing lurking around to take care of. But I do know giving birth was just the start and I don't ever want it to end.

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