Birth-Day Suprise?!

I can’t complain about my pregnancy’s. Or at least I shouldn’t. I love the feeling of a baby moving inside of me. However, for some reason once I hit my third trimester my time starts ticking and my foot begins tapping. The day I hit thirty-seven weeks an internal buzzer goes off inside of me and mentally I’m officially done. This is mainly because I’ve always been quite far along into early labor. So I sit and twiddle my thumbs to meet the bundle of joy while the books tell me babies are done cooking at that point and just gaining weight! Wonderful! Can’t my baby come out and gain some weight?

So I do what any pregnant mother who’s hip’s start to tingle while trying to sleep ONLY on her sides—causing a need to rotate quite frequently in the night…I attempt to go into labor. Spicy food, pineapple, long walks, a little hopscotch dance with the hubby (the blessed reason we were pregnant in the first place), jumping rope, playing volleyball, and tug of war! Yes, I’ve tried just about everything! Seriously at that point in big mama-ness I would hop backwards, with one eye closed, and my left hand waving , down a busy street, in the setting sun if it meant the baby would come out!

Yet, all that gyrating leads to a healthy heart rate, but no baby. I knew our second child would be a girl a year before she was even conceived. She had a persistent little personality which scared me to death! I tend to be a little feisty myself and just can’t imagine having another diva in the house. Plus, I have a very active adorable boy whom I love to dress. I was never a fashionista and cringe at the thought that my daughter could be born starting out on the worst dressed list because of moi! Despite my concerns I was excited to meet her.

Induction or Bust…literally! Labor was great. My husband teases me that I was napping through a portion of it. I have to give a shot out to my anesthesiologist! Thank you funny man, in scrubs, with drugs! You rock! Two contractions/pushes later a child was born. I had such an amazing experience when my son was born. That feeling was incredible. But I have to be honest the first thought I had when my daughter was born was, “who’s baby is that?” She surely did not look like my son. She had lighter hair and white skin! I took one look at my husband and asked him if he needed to tell me something. He looked at me as if mentally saying, ‘I’m the Caucasian here” and said, “Darling, do you need to tell me something? “. if I had blinked for more than a nano second I would have been convinced that the nurses had a few tricks up their sleeves and were doing a one, two, switcharoo on me. To add to the festive occasion, when they placed my darling newborn in my arms I couldn’t help but stare at her ear! She had a wrestlers’ ear! It was big and puffy…I immediately tried to picture hairstyles that would hide the poor thing. Needless to say, this second experience was not like my first—the instant bond was replaced with shock; for a child I was sure now needed to cook inside me a little longer.

I guess I just subconsciously expected her to look like my son. Although my labor was so much shorter my poor daughter was so swollen. She looked like a forty year old man with a mortgage and a commuter-job! I was worried. I knew I would love her unconditionally forever, but let’s be honest girls don’t catch a break if they aren’t at least cute in this world. My darling mother saw passed the swollen birth mode and was so positive, which without her knowledge made me feel horrible because I didn’t feel the same way.

Another second child-shocker was her lack of verbal communication. I secretly kept waiting for her to start talking. Or at least I hoped she would. Even though it had only been two years since the birth of my oldest, I had grown accustom to his independence. And now I was starting all over again. I had to reach into my mommy brain and refresh myself with what a person does to interact with a newborn.

Although I didn’t think she was cute immediately after birth, it did not mean that I wasn’t head over heels in love with her. She was an angel from the start. I never thought it was possible to love more than one child as much as I loved my first. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Weeks after my daughters birth we tried figuring out who she looked like. We stumbled upon a photo of the husband as a baby as well as myself. The result? She looks like both of us. Believe it or not, I was a light-skinned-blue eyed baby for most of the first year of my life. And when my daughter smiles, it’s hard to debate that those dimples are a reflection of yours truly. However, when you are just looking at her before her face lights up, you can clearly see her father. So, aside from my big ears that she inherited from yours truly, I’d say our little peach made out with the best of both worlds.