Looking back...

As I look at my daughter sitting next to me playing with her blocks and her other toys, I'm thinking about what an incredible year 2012 has been.

2012 for me began in New York and almost 6 months pregnant for the first time. I'm enjoying a vacation with my family and friends, I'm comparing bellies with my dad, and eating sooo much delicious home-made food, I'm sure I've reached my weight-limit 3 months early. I'm enjoying every minute, every second of being pregnant. I'm excited, but nervous... I know I'm ready to be a mom, or at least I keep telling myself I am.

Now, my husband is playing with my daughter and I hear the most joyful of giggles coming from the bedroom, into which she crawled. She's 9 and a half months old, she can sit up, crawl, and kneel on her own, stand up as long as she has something to hold onto, and her first tooth just popped out 10 days ago, as a late birthday gift to her daddy. She's all smiles and quiet curiosity, and the best baby and child a parent can wish for.

I feel I have grown a bit, too. I think I've become more responsible, and I'm more at peace. Mostly, I think I've finally come to accept the circumstances of my daughter's birth as something that was out of my control.

I'm sure by now it's no secret how much I was looking forward to giving birth as naturally as was possible. I looked at giving birth as a sort of major accomplishment, that if I could do that, I could do anything. I could finally be proud of something. For someone, who believes she has scarcely accomplished anything in her life, this was a powerful motivator... 

But then circumstances led to a C-section birth, and a scheduled one at that, with only a day of advance notice. Needless to say, I was pretty much crushed. It took my all to get through the night before the surgery, and to try and muster some sort of positive outlook. The surgery itself was the worst experience of my life by far, and I believe the only reason I was able to get through it because my husband was sitting right next to me, holding my hand through the whole thing. (As a side-note, I cannot imagine in my wildest dream why any woman or doctor would choose a C-section over natural birth without a valid medical reason, like so many do today. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against C-sections in general. I think they are life-savers, when they are necessary. I'm only talking about/upset with C-sections without any medical reason what-so-ever, like doctor trying to get home for dinner, or woman hoping to combine it with a tummy-tuck.) I was so enveloped in my own discomfort that I almost missed the moment when my daughter was lifted out of me, and even that barely registered and tries to fade from memory. The only thing that saved me from being completely lost in self pity was being able to breastfeed her without problems from the start. 

Getting to know each other...

However, this wasn't enough to make me feel like I could move heaven and earth for this new little being, like I read so many other mothers did after giving birth and thought I was supposed to feel, too. The love I felt for my daughter wasn't earth shattering love-at-first-sight, but something very slow and gradual. From the moment I was sewn up and back in my room, I went into autopilot mode, feeding and changing her as she needed it, and generally taking care of her, letting her leave my side only while the kind nurses bathed her, so I could shower myself. Please don't misunderstand, I don't think I had the baby blues, and I definitely didn't not wish to be a mother, or anything like that. But I did not feel like a mother, and in fact for months I felt more like I was just babysitting. I was thinking that any minute now someone will come and thank me and pay me for my services, and take her away because her real mother was back, and I'd be sad.

It was not at all how I imagined this would go, and the first night back at home, a week after my daughter's birth, away from all the caring nurses, as I laid down next to her to sleep, I looked at her and I cried. I wanted her back inside me, I wanted to turn back time, I wanted to feel different, to feel more, to feel attachment. I think this was my first step of grief.

Add nine months to that day and little by little, through watching my daughter reach new milestones, through constant negotiations with my husband, through support and guidance of friends, and last but not least, through increasing job satisfaction, I've reached a level of confidence in myself, which originally I thought I could gain through giving birth only. I still hope that maybe with our next child I can give birth naturally, but if for some reason it's not meant to happen, I don't think I'll be as crushed as I was the day we got scheduled for the C-section. 

Snuggling.

It has not been an easy year for me. A month of (in my opinion) useless hospitalization, an emotionally difficult birth, the months of sleep-deprived exhaustion, the hardship of maintaining some sort of intimacy in my marriage, the heartache of missing Rini's firsts because I'm at work, all contributed to this fact. However, it is all worth it, when I hear my daughter giggle and see her mischievous smile. Or when she crawls to me just to kneel at my feet and look up, smiling, and when I pick her up, she snuggles real close, like she wants to melt into me and never let go. Over the last nine months I grew into a mother, and I'm growing still now.

I think I'm very lucky. Though the year wasn't a smooth ride all the way, I got what I've always wished for: a loving and happy family. I'm really thankful for that, and I'm looking forward to this upcoming new year.