Really mine

As I drove ZBoy to school on his birthday, I told him the story of the morning he was born.

He was a c-section baby, planned because the ultrasounds showed him as being very large and very breech. As it turned out, he wasn't as big as they thought, but he definitely was breech.

I tried to get him his own day, but the only day they had available also happened to be our 4th anniversary.

Darling Man and I got up at 4am to be at the hospital by 5:30 to check in. After that was done, we went upstairs and I got my epidural from a very nice man with rather wild hair. I would be awake during the c-section, but I wouldn't feel anything.

I was wheeled into the operating room, while DM waited outside. They don't let the husbands in for the first cut. I guess they had too many pass out on the operating room floor when they did that. I never felt a thing. In fact, the only way I knew I was open was because Darling Man appeared by my head on my side of the drape. He kept his head down and told me he wasn't going to be able to watch, so could he just keep me company on this side?

Then the doctor laughed, and DM couldn't help it - he had to look.

What he saw was my belly - and a tiny foot waving around in the air above it with the doctor trying to get a hold of it. He finally did and after a little maneuvering, managed to pull that boy right out of me. After DM saw that foot, he couldn't take his eyes off it. He didn't look back down until ZBoy was born.

I remembered thinking, "This must be what it feels like to be jello."

And then he was here. The nurses whisked him over to the warming table and sucked out all the excess fluids from his nose and throat, tickled his feet, took his temperature and whatever else.. and brought him over so I could see him. The most beautiful, perfect baby ever.

I told him about our nights together in the hospital room where we lay in bed together trying to get the hang of this nursing thing. We had the baby channel on and spent our nights by the light of the television.

"But... how did you know that I was the right baby?" Z asked.

As soon as you were born, before we left the operating room, they put matching bracelets on us. That way, they couldn't mix you up with the other babies."

"So that means that I really AM yours and Daddy's? They couldn't mix us up?"

No, baby. You really are mine and your Dad's kid. Did you think you weren't?

" Well, sometimes... sometimes I don't seem very much like either one of you. I worried about it."

Honey, you've got your dad's upper lip and mouth, your Buba's nose, Daddy's ears, my chin, my eyes and my coloring. I thought we might get lucky and you'd have your dad's coloring. But after a couple of days, you turned into a very white little baby. You have to be very careful of the sun, just like me. And you have the family birthmark on the back of your head. You're definitely ours.

With a face like that, how could you NOT be?