It’s been said that to have a baby is to “decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” O has only celebrated 4 birthdays, but I’ll be honest, they always hit me right in the feels. 

Somewhere right around 8:54am on this day 4 years ago, I was surrounded by a team of doctors and nurses in an OR after they “crashed” my delivery. I was shaking so much that my teeth chattered, and crying so hard that the anesthesiologist took pity on me, removing and wiping off my glasses while I was otherwise strapped to the table. I was whispering on a loop — I think inaudibly — “please, please, please, please, please.” A million simultaneous wishes for one outcome: please let the baby be okay. I will give anything; please just let the baby be okay.

In what I think is a psychological defense mechanism, I now view this memory as if outside myself, and it culminates in O’s anguished cries mixing with my relieved sobs. The nurse holds the red, wailing infant out for me to see and tells me not to worry; his swelling from his dramatic exit will “go down in a few days.” I continue sobbing, “what swelling?? He’s *sob* so *sob* beautiful.”

Sometimes I feel alone telling this story. I scrounge for words or similes or expressions to describe the fear, and they are — without fail — always inadequate. But the sad, or remarkable, or horrific part is I’m not alone in these types of parenting moments.

We had another close call with O just a few months ago. I’m not ready to put it all in writing because I can’t get past the image of my then 3-year-old’s light-up Spiderman shoes peeking out from behind the paramedic as they lifted him into an ambulance on a stretcher. But the danger passed; he came home. Days later, however, I still found myself periodically locked in the bathroom in order to have an uninhibited ugly cry where my kids couldn’t see me. 

I reached out to a friend who has a child that combated and defeated the real deal: pediatric cancer. I spilled my guts, sheepishly acknowledging how insensitive it felt comparing this 36-hour episode to the sustained trauma she and her daughter were/are living through, but I had to know: how did she get through a day without being physically nauseated at the memory of her child in peril? She sent me a thoughtful, honest reply, highly recommending a good “shower cry” and assuring me that over time, I would be able to accept that he’s okay. When I tearfully asked how I could cope with the consuming thoughts of things that might have happened, she said that “you have to try your very very best not to let your head go there. You (and me) are allowed to feel ‘lucky’ that the alternatives did not happen.” I single-mindedly focus on this sentiment even now, months later, when I have intrusive thoughts about that day.

On the day O was born, my insides were opened — both literally and figuratively. Not a single day has passed between November 18, 2017, and now when I haven’t been consciously grateful that he’s here.

To November 18th, to my sweet son, and to all of the parents who manage to simply put one foot in front of the other as their hearts go walking around outside their bodies. Cheers.