The Five Fish

While I would love to serenade you to The Righteous Brother’s I will spare you my lusterless singing ability. But I will share something that piqued me to do this post. I happened to be helping a dear friend who needed to vent and was seriously about to lose her mind, much like the rest of us who are on the brink thanks to motherhood, and I was amazed at the observation she had about a loved one who is very near to delivering a baby. Mind you moms….a baby. An innocent, new car smell, bundle of peeing, pooping, boobie loving joy.

My friend told me how she thinks her dear loved one appears to not in anyway be attached to her unborn child. I was speechless. Seriously almost stupefied. But a comment and observation such as this is not the first to put me in the blond woman trance.

When I delivered the twins my mother made an astonishing remark to me the day they were born that forever lives in me; “How does it feel? Is it any different?” Okay is what different because I had a C-section so yeah that was different to have someone play with my uterus from the outside in AND I could feel the “tugging” which really freaked me the hell out. Plus the whole catheter thing…can you say GROSS! She continued to say, “Do you love them both…exactly the same, no more no less, you just love them?”

The amazing thing with carrying any child is that as a soon to be mother you truly either have that love and feeling or you don’t. You either build a primal, instinctive bond with your unborn child or you do not. I am a firm believer that although women were given a uterus that does not mean they were given the ability to love and rear a child…well rear yes, love and feeling, no. I also feel that some women are just incapable of those feelings on a higher plane period.

My pregnancy with Grant was amazing and I took so much for granted at first, but at about six to seven months when I really began to show and his kicks grew in intensity and my co-workers saw me flinch all of the sudden my belly was an alter of love. My friends and co-workers would flock to touch my belly, feel Grant kick, I knew I was beaming because I was so blessed with the creation of life inside of my body. I could feel these kicks and turns and hiccups ALL the time. To watch their faces was such a blessing, that I should cherish my pregnancy in spite of the heartburn, constipation, wetting my pants, cravings and awkward sex. A moment that these people, who were caressing my stomach like a love ball would not understand, and I needed to forget all my woes as I watched how my audience was in awe at my creation of life.

Now the twins…well…my reaction to finding out about my pregnancy spoke volumes as to my utter excitement. I had an almost acrimonious attitude, albeit I was delighted to be pregnant and that I was bound for a healthy pregnancy, but the thought of two individuals invading a very small space of real estate that is my uterus was less than a stellar thought. Once I went through my stages of grief in a rather swift fashion I was excited and I knew this pregnancy was a challenge.

The experience was all of a challenge. Carrying two healthy babies to almost full term and by not suffering from any illnesses or gestational induced diseases I had won the battle. But above all the experience was phenomenal. To feel two distinct individuals kicking, hiccuping, moving, I wanted to pet them, and so I did. I would spend hours rubbing my bulbous midsection that almost seemed alien-like. I would talk to them, sing, have big brother do the same and have him feel all that I felt, I was captivated by this pregnancy.

So upon their arrival I knew at that moment, that I heard each cry that I knew I loved these children. When Grant was born, I was overcome, I was wrought with emotion and did not want to let my baby go, ever! With the twins I was much the same and yet felt so hopeless lying on an operating table, fully lucid, unable to reach and hold my children, unable to unleash my raw emotion of birth. For hours I waited for them, waiting to hear and see them, hear more of their cry’s to know they are mine.

Finally when I was allowed the opportunity to hold them and see them I was hypnotized. I just looked at the two of them. In awe. They are mine. I did it and I just wanted to trace their faces with my finger and look at each tiny finger and toe as I had cherished so much with the birth of Grant. I broke down, overcome by the love so easily disbursed to these two tiny people. So when my mother asked me if I could love the two of them equally, just as I could one, I should have taken more sensitivity, because who wouldn’t love the two, equally and unconditionally.

But I can see now how the love for a child is so individual, how the love and feeling for a child or unborn child still in utero is based on the mother and the primal bond that either exists or it doesn’t. I truly feel for those who are incapable of loving a child in that way or unable to love any child for that matter, maybe a lot has to do with age, but I can say that the feeling of seeing your children for the first time after such a long gestation is something to be treasured, and one I feel each and everyday I see them. Regardless of the messes they make, the back talking, the fits, the absolute disasters and embarrassments I can still look at them and be hypnotized by that love and feeling.