October 7, 2009
Dear Georgiana,
You were born this morning. As I write this, you’re coming up on the end of your very first complete day of your entire lifetime. I do hope that you’re enjoying it so far – it gets more interesting, I promise. Life is more than hospital rooms and tests and poking and prodding. There are kites, for example, and bird feeders, and model rockets, and computers that fit in the palm of your hand. I’ll explain each of these to you as you get older. Then, as I get older, I expect you to explain them to me.
If anyone had asked me just a few days ago, I would have very likely told them that you would have been born yesterday, but your birth had its own schedule to keep. Your mom and I checked into the hospital on Monday night, with the complete expectation that you would be born sometime on Tuesday. By 11pm on Tuesday, when it looked like you would never arrive by yourself, the doctor decided that a C-section would be the best way to go. And, at 12:23am this morning, you were born.
In the weeks leading up to today, your mom and I had tried very hard to picture what you would look like, and we weren’t very good at doing that. We had fuzzy images of you before you were born, and they were really only good for figuring out how big you were. We met you for the first time when the nurse brought you to us in the operating room – you’re smaller than we expected, but bigger than we had ever hoped. Does that make sense?
Even though the both of us were exhausted from being in the hospital for so long, seeing you was like the dawn of a new day. I remember the first breath you took, and the first time I heard you cry. I remember the look on your mom’s face when she saw you for the very first time. I remember walking with you as the nurse wheeled you down the dark and empty hospital corridors back to our room.
Since you were born this morning, so much has happened that I’ve only managed to sleep for three hours. I’m at home for tonight, which you will see for yourself very soon, and within the next few minutes I will be asleep. Knowing that you’ve arrived safely, though, is going to give me the best rest I’ve had in a very long time. I want you to know that you were so very much worth the wait.
D
