My Life Story: The First Years - 1

Are there details about your birth you wish you knew but currently don’t?

As I read this prompt for today, I recalled a picture of my mother. It’s a 5x7 photo with my mother dressed in a soft blue robe, sitting upright in a hospital bed with me in her lap area red faced and recently born. I know that pictures lives out there but it’s hard to say where it is now. It’s forever burned into my brain as ‘youngest picture of you ever’. It always bothered me that I couldn’t see my mom’s face in the picture because I’ve always been curious to see how she was looking at me.

I never really wondered how she felt about my birth until after I birthed my own children. Both of my births happened during stressful times. I’m sure if you would have snapped a picture of me with my freshly birthed child, you’d see the concern splashed all over my face.

Were the birth of my girls similar to the birth of me? Did my mom walk around with the stresses that I carried when I was pregnant? I guess, with both the births of my children leaving me with some PTSD, I haven’t really talked to my mom about what happened at the hospital when the kids were being born. I remember a time when I was pursuing therapy to help me heal from the births of my children. I wonder now, as a mom, did my mom struggle, too? I know she had her own struggles being married to my dad but I wonder if she shares a horrifying hospital experience with me. I don’t know. Besides me being a ‘big’ baby, I don’t know much about my entry into this world.