Famous Last Words

“She waited for you!” 

My heart was POUNDING.  I was shaking from head to toe and literally thinking to myself ‘oh dear god I need to calm down or I am going into labor’.

I had just hung up with the Sergeant Major (SGM).  After several months deployed to Afghanistan and five long days of travel, he was finally calling home from a payphone on US soil.  It was ten minutes to midnight on Saturday, July 15, 2006 and he would be home by Monday afternoon – plenty of time before my scheduled C-section that following Thursday.

I sat down and still shaking, began to realize there was no going back.  I was now so excited at the thought of seeing my Love again that my belly was tightening and an overwhelming feeling of ‘this is it’ washed over me.

Within 30 minutes of that phone call my water had broken and I knew that SGM wasn’t going to make it home to greet her.

We were so close.  I fought back the tears and tried to stay calm.  I dialed my sister who was ‘on-call’ and told her she had just won a front-row seat to watching her Goddaughter being born.  She picked me up shortly after and off to the hospital we went. 

We knew RM was breech and I had been waddling my way up to the maternity department for the previous three months for non-stress tests because ultrasounds were unable to get clear pictures of RM’s heart and her size was slightly smaller than expected.  She also had an enlarged umbilical cord, so docs had wanted to keep a close eye on her.

Enter hotty anesthesiologist at 1am into a maternity room with solo Army wife and snarky big sister and it is a recipe for mischief.  I am pretty sure he was quite frightened by our obvious flirting and incessant teenage giggling – way inappropriate – but considering I was about to have a baby without my baby-daddy there to hold my hand, I figured it was like a free pass or something.  And I’m pretty sure (since she said so about a dozen times) that as thrilled as my sister was to be there with me, she felt enormous guilt that her brave-soldier-brother-in-law was missing it all.

6:01am on a beautiful Sunday morning, my baby girl arrived on the scene.  It was eerily quiet.  She was worked on by the nurses for what seemed like forever until that muffled cry began.  That cry.  It didn’t sound right for sure.  But I was exhausted and trying SO DAMN HARD to push the vision of my missing soldier out of mind and just keep craning my neck to get my first glimpse of my beautiful baby girl.

And she WAS indeed beautiful.

Happy Birthday, My Miracle.  May this next year be blessed a thousand times over by your gifts you share with others and your smile that lights the world!  Mama loves you, Baby.