Emotions of a woman on the birth of a child - Essay Example

I didn’t like the frog-looking thing that the ultra-sound revealed, nor the pumpkin that my mother said was inside me, nor the stork stories of Hans Christian Andersen fairytales. I imagined instead that I had swallowed the moon and that it was growing and expanding, filling me with incredible light. First, it was a period of darkness when I couldn’t feel her at all, then a sickle-shaped crescent moon, then a big round full moon that made me waddle in the days, and toss and turn at nights, and crave Kentucky Fried Chicken at midnight and be repulsed by it when I got it.

But now the white-hot light that shafted through me was not the gentle glow that I’d felt for the past three months, but a tearing searing volcanic eruption of a life force that needed at all costs to be brought forth. I felt like a mountain that was being split asunder by a force greater than me, and I thought that I would die from the six-hour ordeal, like Rachel in the Bible story when she gave birth to Benjamin. But no, finally she released me from my woman’s curse of bearing children in pain (from eating the aching attractive but forbidden fruit).

There was a sweltering silence, and in my groggy post-natal haze I heard a sharp short slap, then a wild wail that I couldn’t believe was human.When they put her in my arms I was spellbound. It was impossible that this was her: the moon-thing from my belly, the volcano that erupted from me, the werewolf that wailed at being brought into the world.. I stared at her in amazement. I didn't have enough eyes to look at her, her skin like Starbucks mocha that would eventually "brown" like Grandma's chocolate cake to look more like mine.

I didn't have enough lips to kiss her soft skin that dented under my touch like a downy pillow. Not enough nostrils to inhale her smell -- so strange yet sweet -- a smell of new life. Nor enough hands to touch her incredibly smooth warm skin, to fight with her to unfold her tiny balls of hands that wound around anything it could catch. Seeing her for the first time was more beautiful than Shakespeare's "russet-clad" sunset, more thrilling than my first kiss. And there were many firsts that have dotted this past year like the occasional caramel-coated nut in an already delicious Nestle Drumstick cone: the first time she opened her eyes and revealed her dark brown eyes that she had sneakily kept hidden like an opal; her first smile, like a burst of sunlight peeping out from under a shadowy mountain; her first tear that terrified me and made me want to rip apart the invisible beast that hurt her like an enrage mother lion; the first time she held my hand and a shot of love ran from my womb, up my spine and through my heart.

I am still looking forward to her first words, and hope they will be "Ma-ma", which will be like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to my ears (strange but magnificently beautiful), and not to mention her first steps on chubby drumstick-like legs (I ate too much KFC when I was pregnant), her first cut knee, her first day of school, her first crush Looking at her now, a little brown leprechaun from my own body, with her impish toothless grin, her lovable moon face and scraggly weed-like hair that I don't know how I will ever comb, I'm