The first few hours

Nine months of waiting and all I could think of then was the moment when I would hear the child's cry. So, as is natural, everybody wants to hear how I felt when I finally heard the baby's cry for the first time, how I felt when I first held her in my arms.

I wish I could give you flowery details like how I burst into tears when I heard her cry, and how all kinds of philosophical thoughts were evoked in my mind when I held her in my arms - but unfortunately, nothing that dramatic happened. It was all quite ordinary, almost non-interesting, even frighteningly boring. Sigh!

Anyway, what did I feel like when I heard the baby's cry? The first feeling was that of surprise - is that it? Is the baby already out? The second feeling was that of relief - Yes, the ordeal is over.

After that, I almost dozed off. It was a kind of floating state - probably the high of suddenly feeling no pain after all that intense pain. It was like I was hallucinating everything - everything was unreal.

I could just hear the baby crying in the background, and even this I heard with a kind of dispassionate detachment. S, who was with me throughout, left my side for the first time in hours and went to check on the baby. He came back smiling and glowing and kept saying, "Relax, its over, everything is fine". In spite of all this, I felt no dramatic realization that the baby is finally here. In spite of nine months of wondering if the baby is a boy or a girl, it never occurred to me for an entire five minutes to ask and find out the sex of the baby. The doc didn't tell me coz she said (later) that she wanted S to tell me. S didn't tell me coz he wanted me to ask him first. Finally realization dawned upon me, and when S came back to me after watching the baby being washed, I asked him, Is it a boy or a girl? A girl, he said, grinning... its a girl.

Now I didn't have any particular preferences, but S had a leaning towards a daughter. As for me, each time I peeked into the baby clothes section in the shops and saw all those lovely frocks with ribbons and lace and flowers, I felt, "It would be nice if I had a girl" - Shallow, I know... but well, that's me :)

But I had a very strong feeling that it would be a boy, for no reason at all, and I had adjusted to the thought that it would be a boy. So I had a lot of readjustment to do. (In fact, the next day when the paediatrician came to check on me, I was telling her, "Yeah he slept well, yeah he had his bowel movements"..... she almost asked me, "Do you know you had a daughter?" :)

Now back to when baby was born. I was tremendously surprised to hear that it is a girl. And insanely thrilled. Finally, the baby was wrapped up and brought to me, still lying there. I just had the little pink thing in my arms for a couple of minutes - not really in my arms, but by my side - it was cradled by an unknown hand. I could just see a pink puckered-up face before it was whisked away, and given to my mom and aunt who were waiting outside. After a bit, I also went back to my room to my baby.

I was thrilled with the baby, I carried her for a while... but no way could I associate her with the tumbling, kicking being that was inside me for all those months. I felt no profound feelings or anything of that sort. It is not that I didn't have any feelings at all. The love and fascination was overwhelming, but it was still very unreal and hazy. Though a hundred people told me, "You need rest, go to sleep", I got no sleep for the rest of the night. Over-exhaustion and over-excitement does that to me - and this was a combination of both!

It was only after about 36 hours, after I had finally managed to catch about 4-5 hours of sleep, did I finally sense an emotional attachment to her... and then started all the emotions.... "Oh my god, she is mine!" "Ohmigosh, she is an actual tiny human being!" "Good heavens, she is perfect!" "Oh man the responsibility of this tiny person is upon us!".....

S and I can't seem to get enough of her.

Thanks to everybody for all the wishes!