Hey there, awesome readers!
Do you believe that some people have a “sixth sense”? I’m not talking about the woo-woo, I-can-read-your-mind type? Nope. I’m referring to that sense of GUILT that comes with being a mother. (Perhaps fathers have it too but that’s not my experience so I can’t tell you about that.)
Well, this Friday I’ll be sharing an excerpt from my book SUPERWOMAN: A Funny and Reflective Look at Single Motherhood.
Here’s an excerpt of the excerpt. Let me know if you can relate:
Think about the first time you looked into your new baby’s tender, old-man face. (Oh, come on! Newborns are rarely as cute as we pretend they are.) After hours of heavy pushing and pain and temporary insanity, the rest of the world slips away, and it’s just you, lying in the eye of the hurricane, holding the sweetness that you had been carrying for the last nine months (which felt like nine years). The moment brought tears to your soul, didn’t it?
Meanwhile, the doctors and nurses, everyone else in the room, watched in awe as mommy and new baby bonded in natural, naked glory. Legs still in stirrups yet long forgotten, hair sticking to the sides of your sweaty face, emotions hijacking your heart and soul, you were completely oblivious to the indecency of your dignity. For the doctors and nurses, it was just another day on the job. No need to cringe in shame, because once the task of assisting with childbirth is accomplished, the last thing anyone is focusing on are your exposed and mangled private parts. But you know this already. From their perspective, their job of helping to deliver your new baby is done. Now what they get to witness is an emotional moment, a phenomenon of beautiful proportions—a mother’s love reduced to its purest and unaltered state during the first moments of her child’s life.
But you and me, we’ve been on this side of the stirrups, and we know what’s really going on. Those tears of joy that spill out through exhausted eye sockets are actually tears of terror. As you look down into that tiny face, so new and so trusting, you’re crying because your greatest wish is that time would freeze. You’re not asking for much. Just a few years. This is because in that moment in time, innocence is still shiny new with slimy, untampered perfection. You have not yet screwed up.
End of excerpt.
Shall we reconvene on Friday?
UPDATE:
And if you’re late to the party and have just landed on this post, here’s the link to the excerpt.
###
Subscribe to this blog and get notified when new posts are up. How do you subscribe? Just enter your email address in the subscription box (somewhere on this page, depending on what device you’re reading from).
Leave a Reply