I was sitting in a stuffy little white room, on a blue plasticky bed, my feet not touching the floor. I felt like a small child, like I should be swinging my legs and singing rather than sitting as still as I was, just waiting. It felt like an eternity before the doctor came back, clipboard in hand and white coat tails flying behind her. She flipped a few pages and asked me how I was feeling. My hand flew instinctively to my swollen belly, that tell tale reminder of the fact that I wasn’t a child with no cares in the world. I was an adult with scary decisions to make and the weight of worries resting on my shoulders forevermore.
I didn’t know how I was feeling. These appointments were blending into one now, the same four walls for hours at a time, the same rhythmic beeps and clicks and the same pounding fears stretching out between now and whenever they would finally decide enough is enough.
It was only yesterday.
And then it came. She couldn’t stay any longer cloaked in my protection. I had to give her up to his world and trust in others to help her, breathe life into her.
It was only yesterday.
It was too soon, we weren’t ready and yet we’d been willing this day to come for weeks. So scared to leave it any longer, so desperate to keep it going another day and another day and another day still.
It was only yesterday.
It was only yesterday when they held my hand and told me not to be scared, this was the right thing to do. If they left me any longer and something happened, I’d never forgive myself. Better out than in. Weeks early, but better.
It was only yesterday when they placed the needle in my hand, the needle in my spine. The knife to my belly. Someone was stroking my hand and speaking in a calming sing song voice about everything and nothing. And I’d been there before, three times before…. but this time so different.
It was only yesterday when they lowered the blue screen and held her up, pink and scrawny and fierce. Legs, arms, head. Five toes? Five fingers? All intact? They took her away and willed her to be ok as I stayed there, cold and shivering and warmed by tears searing down my cheeks. I stayed there and I did not move, not until they came back with her, and told me that she was ok.
It was only yesterday.
And Now I’m lying here with my legs crossed at the ankle, on my tummy in the darkness, cradled by the floor. I’m by her side, where I am most of the time. I’m waiting until I can hear the steady sounds of her light breathing as she falls asleep at last. I’m waiting to scoop her into my arms again and to blow up balloons and eat cake and tear wrapping paper. I’m waiting to smile and to laugh and to hold the weight of her against me again.
And though it feels like yesterday, tomorrow she is three. Three.