ON GIVING BIRTH
There is something to be said about leaving a piece of yourself behind in the form of children. Twenty-seven years ago I looked upon my daughter for the first time as she was laid upon my belly, her umbilical cord still attached to me. Her little eyes seemed endless as she looked at me. I witnessed a piece of myself lying there and yet she was so curiously and wondrously unique. Today I stand next to her, wiping her face and reminding her to focus on the birthing movements of her own body instead of on pain and fear. She has always been utterly terrified of pain. Yet there she is ... refusing all drugs ... living her determination to birth her baby as nature would have it, as did the endless stream of her great-grandmothers before her.
Centuries of pushing, preparing, sighing - and then my daughters daughter is placed across her mother's breast, staring into her mother's eyes. The Great Mystery is blessing me again, letting me see my granddaughter, the piece of myself who will step into the future and in turn mold her own child, my great grandchild.
Kay Cordell Whitaker, extracted from 'Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul', Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Jennifer Read Hawthorne and Marci Shimoff, Health Communications, Inc; 1996.
There is something to be said about leaving a piece of yourself behind in the form of children. Twenty-seven years ago I looked upon my daughter for the first time as she was laid upon my belly, her umbilical cord still attached to me. Her little eyes seemed endless as she looked at me. I witnessed a piece of myself lying there and yet she was so curiously and wondrously unique. Today I stand next to her, wiping her face and reminding her to focus on the birthing movements of her own body instead of on pain and fear. She has always been utterly terrified of pain. Yet there she is ... refusing all drugs ... living her determination to birth her baby as nature would have it, as did the endless stream of her great-grandmothers before her.
Centuries of pushing, preparing, sighing - and then my daughters daughter is placed across her mother's breast, staring into her mother's eyes. The Great Mystery is blessing me again, letting me see my granddaughter, the piece of myself who will step into the future and in turn mold her own child, my great grandchild.
Kay Cordell Whitaker, extracted from 'Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul', Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Jennifer Read Hawthorne and Marci Shimoff, Health Communications, Inc; 1996.
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