This one is to all the mothers; a beautiful essay by my dear friend Laurie...(The three little monkeys are Ava Rose, Luigia and Andoni)
A Mother’s Love
Laurie McIntosh March 2005
When our first child was a born a few months ago, my husband and I received a lot of what we referred to as “funeral calls” – the plodding, joyless voices speaking in hushed tones to our answering machine: “Hi, Laurie and Ira. We heard about the baby. We just wanted to call and see how you’re doing. Call if you need anything. But don’t feel like you have to call…”
How are we doing? We’re ecstatic! Hell, I just gave birth to a baby – a BABY – our very own little girl who is positively gorgeous and adorable and who we are both madly in love with.
You see, our daughter Ava Rose was born with Down syndrome as well as some of the heart defects which we quickly learned are very common in folks with Down syndrome. And though I never would have asked for my daughter to spend the first 18 days of her life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, everything was really okay.
When I got around to returning those funeral calls, my friends’ voices audibly brightened and their nervousness fell away as they listened to me gush in a most bubbly fashion about our brand new baby girl. Yes, gush. Yes, bubbly. Isn’t that what every new mother does?
I thank my husband for helping me realize that I ought to cut all those “funeral callers” some slack. Heck, without living the experience myself, I never would have known how best to speak to someone who’s just given birth to a child who is genetically something other than “normal”. In fact, when I was five months pregnant with Ava Rose, a friend of mine gave birth to a child with Down syndrome. And as my midwife, who had just delivered my friend’s baby, urged me to get amniocentesis, I lay on the examining table, tears streaming from my eyes, trying to imagine what that must be like. How do they break the news? Do they wait a few hours to give you a chance to bask in the joy of new parenthood, or do they just come right out and tell you? Once they tell you, do you still get to be joyous and fall in love?
My answer is an unequivocal, hearty YES. Yes! A mother is a mother is a mother. And a mother’s love, well, that is a whole species of love unto itself. Species? Why be so limiting? It is a world unto itself – a vast landscape, with mountains and oceans and meadows where wildflowers of every color and shape dance in warm breezes. And in one of those meadows is a young girl, barefoot, skipping and free, laughing and golden. Though she may not know it yet, that love is within her. She tries it out on other things first: the spider whose web she spares, the little red-bellied snake darting among the rocks and grasses, her baby brother, the sun, a teddy bear, the trees. It is a love that is simply grateful to these beings for simply being.
Oh, but it is so much more. It is a love that makes you want to dance and smile, a love that teaches you how to forgive -- really forgive. It allows you to drag yourself out of bed at three in the morning, night after night. It is the only thing in your life that has allowed you to give up caffeine.
And it is still so much more. (Is there a way to describe what you feel when laying in bed nursing your sweet little warm infant, she gazes into your eyes and beams the brightest smile at you?)
So are we happy about being the parents of this child? I don’t know of anything I’ve ever done in my life that has felt this good.
Oh, by the way…when you call -- the word is “Congratulations.”
Laurie McIntosh March 2005
When our first child was a born a few months ago, my husband and I received a lot of what we referred to as “funeral calls” – the plodding, joyless voices speaking in hushed tones to our answering machine: “Hi, Laurie and Ira. We heard about the baby. We just wanted to call and see how you’re doing. Call if you need anything. But don’t feel like you have to call…”
How are we doing? We’re ecstatic! Hell, I just gave birth to a baby – a BABY – our very own little girl who is positively gorgeous and adorable and who we are both madly in love with.
You see, our daughter Ava Rose was born with Down syndrome as well as some of the heart defects which we quickly learned are very common in folks with Down syndrome. And though I never would have asked for my daughter to spend the first 18 days of her life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, everything was really okay.
When I got around to returning those funeral calls, my friends’ voices audibly brightened and their nervousness fell away as they listened to me gush in a most bubbly fashion about our brand new baby girl. Yes, gush. Yes, bubbly. Isn’t that what every new mother does?
I thank my husband for helping me realize that I ought to cut all those “funeral callers” some slack. Heck, without living the experience myself, I never would have known how best to speak to someone who’s just given birth to a child who is genetically something other than “normal”. In fact, when I was five months pregnant with Ava Rose, a friend of mine gave birth to a child with Down syndrome. And as my midwife, who had just delivered my friend’s baby, urged me to get amniocentesis, I lay on the examining table, tears streaming from my eyes, trying to imagine what that must be like. How do they break the news? Do they wait a few hours to give you a chance to bask in the joy of new parenthood, or do they just come right out and tell you? Once they tell you, do you still get to be joyous and fall in love?
My answer is an unequivocal, hearty YES. Yes! A mother is a mother is a mother. And a mother’s love, well, that is a whole species of love unto itself. Species? Why be so limiting? It is a world unto itself – a vast landscape, with mountains and oceans and meadows where wildflowers of every color and shape dance in warm breezes. And in one of those meadows is a young girl, barefoot, skipping and free, laughing and golden. Though she may not know it yet, that love is within her. She tries it out on other things first: the spider whose web she spares, the little red-bellied snake darting among the rocks and grasses, her baby brother, the sun, a teddy bear, the trees. It is a love that is simply grateful to these beings for simply being.
Oh, but it is so much more. It is a love that makes you want to dance and smile, a love that teaches you how to forgive -- really forgive. It allows you to drag yourself out of bed at three in the morning, night after night. It is the only thing in your life that has allowed you to give up caffeine.
And it is still so much more. (Is there a way to describe what you feel when laying in bed nursing your sweet little warm infant, she gazes into your eyes and beams the brightest smile at you?)
So are we happy about being the parents of this child? I don’t know of anything I’ve ever done in my life that has felt this good.
Oh, by the way…when you call -- the word is “Congratulations.”
