I was told to write while waiting for you to be born. Write about how I felt, what I experienced, all of what went on while waiting for that moment where we would get to see you, hear you, hold you and know you. I didn't write about any of it while waiting for you.

 

I barely took any photos of myself while pregnant with you. It didn't occur to me so much as to lay there wondering what you would look like. How much of my eyes would yours shape themselves to be? Would your hair be red like my mother's or darker than your father's? 

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I forgot much of myself in dreaming about you. I wanted you for my entire life, and at some point in trying to convince others, I had almost convinced myself that I didn't want to be a mother. That the kids I worked with, the animals I cared for, the plants I chose to name before I watered them, were all enough for me to mother, that I didn't need to actually be someone's mom. I still wanted you. 

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I did not want you with the wrong person. You would not have been YOU, had it been with the wrong person. I was made with the wrong person, and while that's fine, I knew you would have never been his. You would have been part of me, and part of someone who loved us both. Someone who cared immensely for people who would not care back enough, who would be as strong as he was gentle and kind. Someone with heart. Someone who would make us both smile, and laugh, because his laugh was contagious and something I would always need to hear. Someone unafraid to kiss us both, always. It wasn't just you I wanted, I wanted him. I wanted us. 

It took me a long time to find your daddy, and I was right. We have dreamed so long of having one another, and even longer of loving you. 

 

So I did not write about waiting for you. Because waiting for you has been a lifetime of words that have long escaped us, things better left forgotten, a waterfall of daydreams and a deep breath before jumping out of a life we did not want and grabbing one another's hands to run, really live, and go and find you.

 

If you want the facts that lined up while I was pregnant with you, I can give you those. Like my mother, I never got sick. Unlike my mother, my ankles puffed up into even puffier feet and I sincerely missed my legs.

I did get a few stretch marks, but nothing too terrible and lotion helped. Your daddy often asked you to come out and dance with us. You were breeched for a good while, but my mother believed you would flip around and eventually you did.

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I pretty much craved nothing in particular my entire pregnancy, though there was a day where I needed Lucky Charms cereal because I had seen someone else eating it. I gained weight and I was told it was too much too fast by almost everybody except for the doctor and nurses. I didn't like that I had gained so much weight, and it hurt my knees to carry it, but I was carrying you too and that is what mattered more to me. I was grumpy sometimes, and other times overwhelmed with how much I felt in one sitting, but I tried to hold it in sometimes. I usually wasn't so good at holding it in. Daddy is a brave man. Sometimes I wondered how many times throughout your life you would look at me with disdain and it crushed me. 

 

The rest of the facts fell into place as easily as you would have them. Despite flipping around, you were destined to be a c-section baby anyway. We went in and they monitored us and turned out with each contraction, you seemed in distress. So Daddy slapped some scrubs on, and helped Mommy waddle over to the room. Some time passed and a few funny quips from the anesthesiologist and a great deal of hand squeezing and "I love you"'s later, we got to hear you cry. It was the sweetest crying I had ever heard in my life.

 

The doctor sounded astonished at "what a pretty face" you had. There you were, with hair as dark as your father's.

Your eyes shaped perfectly between how your father and I looked at one another. 

Perfectly crinkled ears and a mouth that I could have kiss printed the shape on you myself.

 

We loved you the entire time.