and someone to love you back.
That is what this mother-child relationship is all about. When I was pregnant with my first child, I’d wonder what kind of love I would have with my child. Would it be unconditional, would it be intense, stable….oh those wondrous nights of anticipation mixed with the discomforts of a growing belly and endless blood tests for having being diagnosed with gestational diabetes.
When I was a kid and way into my teen years, my medical records indicated that I needed special attention during blood tests as I always passed out. A few times, I even fell on the ground and hurt myself. And here I was, a few years laters, pricking my finger at least 4 times a day to monitor my sugar levels. I had little holes in all my ten fingers and by the time I was ready to give birth, I was running out of space. A few weeks before my due date, I was driving back from work, a 40-50 minutes drive, extremely uncomfortable behind the wheel, struggling to find a spot to adjust myself. My check up earlier that day revealed that I was nowhere near ready but I just didn’t feel right. The weekend that followed was very painful. One part of me knew the time had come, while the other part of me was feeding on the last thing my doctor had mentioned. Well, Sunday night, I had to step out of bed and go to the guest room in tears because the contractions had gotten severe. I called the nurse and she asked me to record the timings and to drink some orange juice. I made 3 more calls and then my husband woke up. I wanted to go to the hospital but was buying time until the morning as it was the holy month of Ramadan and only a couple of hours were left before my husband could have his breakfast before sunrise. But by that time, I was on my hands and knees, gasping, hoping that somehow I could make it to labor and delivery through a transporter beam, like the Star Trek ones.
When I got there, I was asked to start pushing.
So all these months of falling in love with that little seed seemed to have been pushed aside by a biologically-mechanical process of giving birth. And for you moms out there, you’d agree that you experience a taste of death, especially if you’re being heroic without any epidural.
SO there. A few hours later, you’re blessed with this tiny human being, that is yours, a hundred per cent. What happened to the pain, the discomfort, the pricks, the agony of childbirth? When they set her in my arms, it was like I knew no pain or misery, that I was perhaps the luckiest woman on earth to have received this beautiful gift from the almighty, that I must have done something good.
And since then, I try to remind myself of the sweet innocence and power in that bond when I lose my temper unjustly. I know I am human and by no means perfect, and as a mother, I sway sometimes. So at times like these, I breathe a breath of gratitude knowing that I have someone to love….and someone to love me back.