Nine hours, two epidurals and a pitocin drip later, I couldn’t feel the contractions or my toes. With my mother on my left and my boyfriend on the right side, I pushed down as hard as one strapped to a medical bed could.

I’m not sure what went through my mind as I closed my eyes, but I remember it this way:

“You’re doing good, Courtney. Keep pushing, keep pushing.”

“There he is, mom. One more good push. You can do it. On my count.”

Their encouragements were like speed limit markers during low traffic times – mere suggestions.

“Come on Courtney! He’s right there, he’s right there!”

I leaned back and stared at the darkness inside my eyelids. This should have taken two pushes. It’s not working. He’s not coming out.

I sat forward and forgot how to breathe in, breathe out with the rhythm of my uterus. I held my breath and bore down so forcefully that my knees started to touch.

Maybe God only grants our wishes when we’re bent into submission. Is that why we pray with our heads bowed, on our knees?

I wanted to ball up in the fetal position when plop! Out popped my angel.

Wrinkled, vernix-white – there was this part of me that had been torn from my insides and wrapped warmly across my chest as some sort of sash for accomplishment.

Have you ever seen a baby foal torn feet first from its mother – it’s legs bound and body dragged one bony limb at a time from its mother’s delicate, form-fitting womb?

It’s all at once this vivid, horrid image of the miracle of life.

Yeah…I couldn’t fathom the ‘miracle,’ either.

So I cried. I bawled so uncontrollably that I didn’t really see or hear his first moments alive.

The lady nurse farthest from me read aloud his weight at seven pounds, nine and half ounces. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the emotion I felt as he was carried from weigh station to incubator. How his wails calmed down when his father grabbed his tiny fingers for the first time…

But everyone else in the room was smiling.

Looking back now, all I ever remember are the cries.

The mourning.

The deep-seated relief of having him OUT of me, without knowing where the hell we were going next.

What the hell was I afraid of losing?

I went through every emotion you can think of – tears of joy, unhappiness, confusion, regret – in what felt like a matter of minutes, and then I went home with the greatest gift.

EPICA2

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” – Isaiah 11:6

_
Courtney Akinosho
Blog // Twitter // Youtube // FAWF posts by Courtney Akinoso