Moments I Don't Forget To Remember
Moments I Don't Forget to Remember
The pain came suddenly as I slipped into consciousness. It wasn’t that mild irregular tenderness I had been having all evening, but it was that slightly stronger, constant tightening with lower abdominal cramping. I just knew it was the real deal.
I made sure to keep myself calm as I knew what to expect already. Yuri had prepared me in the past months with information regarding labour, birth, baby bathing, sleeping, and settling. I didn’t want to wake her up at one a.m., so I decided to wait as I walked around my room, trying to get my head off the bizarre idea Sung Yeol and Min Ho, your father’s friends, had on his whereabouts.
The contractions were bearable; I could still breathe through them, but eventually as it advanced to four in ten minutes by four o’clock, the pain intensified. I struggled to leave my room in between contractions and approached Yuri and Min Ho’s room, while Sung Yeol was sound asleep on the couch. In due course, Yuri and Sung Yeol took me to the birth centre while Min Ho stayed with his kids.
When I saw those two red lines, my world spun around me. It felt so surreal and inconceivable. The emptiness in my head was absolute.
Despite being confident that I wanted you, I couldn't help but wonder about my ability to have you.
Thoughts flooded my mind at once – I can’t afford a child, I haven’t even finished uni yet.
I’m too selfish to have a child.
I’ll never sleep again.
I’m not ready yet.
I really can’t afford to have a child when I’m unemployed.
I can say goodbye to all my hopes and dreams – there are still things I want to do before I'm tied down by a child.
But simultaneously, other thoughts raced through – I can and will find a way to afford the child.
It’s not all about me.
Sleep can be arranged.
If not now, then when? I know I'll regret it if I go through a termination.
I can and I will find a job.
As for my hopes and dreams… well, now I have even more inspiration to fulfill them.
This course of thoughts filled my head as I stood in the bathroom and clutched the two sticks in my hand.
What am I going to do with you?
I looked down at the stick and took a long, deep breath.
I couldn’t help but imagine what the next nine months would bring. In nine months, everything was going to change—they will change. I pictured myself holding you and interacting with you. I saw your smile and as odd as it was, it felt real.
I want you. I want to have you.
And therefore, I can have you.
Yuri, my midwife and confidante, had said, "Everyone will have different experience, Amber. Just expect that it'll be the most painful thing you could ever experience in your life. It's just so overwhelming that you couldn't breathe." She was right about that. The agonising contraction pain was like being stabbed on the pubic bone with a knife repeatedly. I could still remember dreading every subsequent contraction because each one had a new strength to be overcome. It was powerful; it just kept building up and building up until I couldn’t take it anymore. I was running out of energy from the lack of sleep and the exertion those contractions laid upon me. The warm water in the bath helped with the pain, but my whole body was already aching; I couldn’t even distinguish anymore between actual contraction and the after-pain. All I remember was focusing to get through each one without caring about my surroundings. It was something that I simply do not want to remember. Nevertheless, I was adamant I wanted no pain relief. I felt proud of myself by then end, knowing I went through the labour and birth without it.
You were still more of a concept than reality to me. There were times when I forgot that I was having you. It wasn’t easy to get used to. Every morning I woke up, I kept reminding myself that I was, in fact, pregnant.
The first time you kicked me was the moment I registered in my mind that my life was really about to change forever. I couldn't help but wonder who is this person growing, turning, swimming deep inside. Are you having fun with the night party there?
Being alone pregnant in a foreign country was no easy case; the discrimination and inequality were to be expected. Buying baby clothes and a stroller was new to me. I had not stepped into a baby shop since I was five, when your grandmother bought a few for her friends. The judgmental looks and alienation I received for being young were upsetting and discouraging. Twenty-one years of age is the first step of being a full-grown adult, as everyone sees it regardless of mental maturity, however we remain too young to have a baby.
Yuri said, “Women used to have babies as young as sixteen. You’re twenty-one. You’re pregnant, you decided to go through with it, as a third party observer, we should just mind our own business. It’s your life, nobody has the right to judge you or make you feel crap. Prejudice will always be around, but in the end, it is you to choose where your life goes.”
Sometimes, being ignorant is just all we need to keep going. The disapproving stares and critical attitudes were slightly more endurable because I decided that I chose to have you and I will go through with it.
The lower back aches were excruciating.
The morning sickness and nocturnal leg cramps were endurable.
But most of all, the bodily changes and weight gain were astounding. I could hardly walk at my normal pace by the time I reached 36 weeks. I felt massive. I wondered if I would ever go back to my previous weight. However, this concern was overcome by my worries for your wellbeing in there.
When you were born, somehow it made perfect sense to me that the exhaustion of carrying you for 40 weeks and one day was worth it.
The crowning of the head didn't hurt as much as the ripples of contractions, I remember that. No one, unless they’ve been through it, would have any idea of the enormous amount of relief that surged through me when I felt the tension on my perineum gone and a cry filled the bathroom space. Yuri lifted your wriggling body out of the water and up to my chest. I laughed and almost cried when I saw and felt you before me. Your eyes were closed as you cried and crawled on me. I looked down to find out what you are and was in bliss when I discovered you’re a girl. When you gasped and your nasal cry began to settle down, you opened your eyes. When I looked into those brown orbs, I realised I had experienced the impossible in my life and I believed it. What I couldn’t believe was that I do believe it.
Before you were born, I fell in love with you. Before you even knew of your own existence, I knew my existence could not be without you.
ღ
It's a whole new world.
Days are filled with constant demands and nappies. I definitely have less time for myself and don’t sleep as well, and when I do, it’s rare and valuable. I can’t be selfish anymore because your needs come first. My patience and resolutions are tested to the maximum every day. These are the times when I just want out and I yearn for an alone time, but I miss you truly, madly, deeply do even when I’m busy at work. Hearing your voice always makes my day.
I couldn’t work for a while after I had you and my saving was going downhill. The government delayed my baby bonus because I was a foreigner and something had to be done about your birth registration by the third day. All these worries were so overpowering that I was on the brink of insanity.
Having a baby is one of the hardest things I had ever done, especially since I was alone. I was drained emotionally and physically. The emotional demands alone were enough to make a once-stable woman like me to lose it.
Knowing the benefits of feeding from reading and my favourity for natural aspects of childbearing, I decided to feed. I didn’t want to spend money on formula and bottles anyway, considering I was low on money. Unfortunately, feeding isn’t something that we could master within a day; it’s something that has to be learned for a period of time. Yuri warned me of the day two and day three baby’s behaviours. The way you’ll get very unsettled and want to feed literally every few hours. It was initially tolerable, but after a whole night of no sleep and aching body, you never seemed to be satisfied. I was worried I wasn’t giving you enough and began to feel inadequate about my capability to care for you.
When I saw your smile and I realised that you were happy, it suddenly became all that matters. You were three days old when you first smiled to me. I swear you have a smile that could light up the whole world. It felt so magical that words just cannot describe. It was like looking at a new sky in a whole new universe. You are the most beautiful individual I have ever seen. You are simply perfect to me.
I used to think sitting down doing nothing is a waste of time, but after you were born, I could spend hours gazing at you in precious, golden silence. I would observe and touch your soft hair, little nose, chubby cheeks, crimson lips, and the various expressions you make. The ways you pout, grimace, and pucker your lips when you slept were precious; capturing the present had never seemed so vital. When I felt your tiny hand in mine, I thought of how wonderful it was.
Wonders never left me. Are you really mine? I couldn’t believe I made you, and pushed a 7.6 pounds baby out of me. I missed being pregnant; I was so used to have you inside me, but I was glad to have you out too. I see myself reflected on your face, also your father. Your deep brown eyes are the most distinct to me because they look like his. When I see you, it’s like seeing him. And I receive the will to keep going. Every time I look at you, it’s like he never really left me. Loving you keeps him alive. Loving him keeps me alive.
Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational thing two people in love can commit.
ღ
The future is planned with new dreams, hopes, and fear. Images of what you’ll be in the future and what terrible things could happen to you regularly come to me. I put greater value on my own life and take better care of my own health. I’m more afraid of losing it because I have so much more to lose.
I lost you once, in the crowded street of Toulouse2. You were three. I had never felt so scared in my life. You were so small and everyone was much taller than you; you were obviously hidden well. I looked around and called out to you frantically. I stopped breathing when the idea of losing you for good seeped into my head. Panic thickened in my my throat, choking me as my insides flipped furiously. I traced back the street to the last place we went to as I searched through the crowd, but to no avail. I kept walking, I didn’t even know where I was going. When I finally found you crying in front of a convenience store, I heaved a sigh of relief and sprinted off before anyone could get to you.
You looked up with your tear-drenched face. It was a face I could never forget. I felt a part of me dying with every tear that trickled down your face. Anxiety ripped my insides and I found it hard to breathe. You called out to me and ran into my embrace. I couldn’t let go of your hands since; I just had to make sure you were with me all the time.
I always wondered whether I had been doing the right things as a mother because I had no experience, but I learned that parents are mirrors for a baby that tell him or her who she or he is; we are also windows that tell him or her what she or he can expect. Unfortunately, we cannot protect our children from all life’s disappointment. As Yuri had said, we don’t have to be perfect, we just have to be good enough.
When I sent you for your first day of kindergarten, it was one of the hardest days I had ever experienced. I could not stop worrying and I wondered whether it was too early to send you at four years old.
“Amber, just calm down. She will be okay,” Yuri had said. She had a day off that Monday and was reading an article at the dinner table.
“I know,” I said. “I’m just getting a glass of water.”
“That’s the fifteenth time in the past one hour already.”
“Really?” I gaped in disbelief.
“Yes!” she enunciated as she gave me a stern gaze.
I sighed and looked at the clock. Five more hours before you would come home.
Things were in my mind: Are you okay? You’re always with me and now you will have to walk on the journey alone. What if you get sick? What if you cry for me? Bad premonitions flooded my head.
I decided to work on my assignment, but I could only restrained myself for a few hours before I couldn’t take it anymore. I called up your school after lunch time to ask how you were. Your teacher said you were asleep with the other children and that you had fun playing with them today. I wasn’t very reassured. However, when I picked you up later that day, you had the brightest smile on your face and you were babbling about what you did in class.
“Madame Sierra readed us Le Petit Prince today and we played Lotto Game. It was fun! I also drawed something for you, Mumma!” you told me and took out a picture of us that you drew in class.
My eyes warmed as I looked at the stick drawings made with different colours of crayon. It dawned on me that you were growing up, at such a fast pace, and I had to accept that.
You taught me that time can be measured in how much you change and I try to cherish every precious moment with you.
As a mother, I also came to know such a bittersweet unrequited love because it was expected that you won’t love me as much as I love you.
“Didn’t I tell you to come out at nine sharp?” I growled at you after we bid your friend’s parents goodbye and I drove away from their house. It was night time and Toulouse is not a safe place to wander around alone at night.
“Mum,” you whined defensively, “you’re the one who taught me manners. I can’t just leave without saying bye to everyone at the party.”
“But you could’ve done that before nine o’clock!” I made a point.
“But it’s cold outside and it’s dark. What if you’re late? You don’t expect me to stand outside in the cold and get kidnapped right?” you reasoned sharply.
“When I said nine, it’s nine. I was just at the end of the alley when I told you to get ready. You could’ve made it in time, Paris! The darker it gets, the less safe it is.”
“But it’s cold! I don’t want to wait!” you raised your voice at me.
I never had so much anger boiling inside me, mixed with disappointment and defeat. You were only seven and yet you had the nerve to talk back to me with such a tone. When I was your age, I was dealing with my parent’s separation; I don’t remember ever arguing with my mother because she was too occupied with work.
There is just no ‘safe zone’. Having a child means being vulnerable to pain for the rest of your life.
ღ
For all the joy and tears you’ve opened my eyes to, I could never forget.
I remember your elated smile and your carefree laugh from the very first day you had them, and your merry shout as soon as you can talk.
I remember your constant demand for food and the nappy changes I had to do during the night, and I remember the spiteful words you said when you were angry and upset.
Despite all of these, I couldn’t hate you and “It’s okay” will always come from me every time you apologise, even when you don’t.
“Mum, you know I love you right?” the ten-year-old you suddenly asked, one day.
“No, I don’t,” I replied, honestly.
“Well, I do,” you asserted, beaming in the process. “I love you.”
Your arms made their way around my neck and you leaned up to kiss me on the cheek. In an instant, my lips pulled up into a smile.
Hearing you say “I love you” makes every sacrifice worthwhile.
In a lifetime of mistakes, you and your father, are the best things that have ever happened to me.
These are the days mothers don't forget to remember. The moments I don't forget to remember.
ღ
Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you've had a baby.
Somebody doesn't know that once you're a mother, "normal" is history.
Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct.
Somebody never took a three-year-old shopping.
Somebody said being a mother is boring.
Somebody never rode in a car driven by a teenager with a driver's permit.
Somebody said if you're a 'good' mother, your child will 'turn out good'.
Somebody thinks a child comes with directions and a guarantee.
Somebody said 'good' mothers never raise their voices.
Somebody never came out the back door just in time to see her child hit a golf ball through the neighbor's kitchen window.
Somebody said you don't need an education to be a mother.
Somebody never helped a fourth grader with her math.
Somebody said you can't love the fifth child as much as you love the first.
Somebody doesn't have five children.
Somebody said a mother can find all the answers to her child-rearing questions in the books.
Somebody never had a child stuff beans up his nose or in his ears.
Somebody said the hardest part of being a mother is labor and delivery.
Somebody never watched her 'baby' get on the bus for the first day of kindergarten—or on a plane headed for boot camp.
Somebody said a mother can do her job with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back.
Somebody never organised four giggling Brownies to sell cookies.
Somebody said a mother can stop worrying after her child gets married.
Somebody doesn't know that marriage adds a new son or daughter-in-law to a mother's heartstrings.
Somebody said a mother's job is done when her last child leaves home.
Somebody never had grandchildren.
Somebody said your mother knows you love her, so you don't need to tell her.
Somebody isn't a mother.
- Anonymous
Comments