I don’t even know what I was having.
All that stress, all that anxiety, all that panic… has it finally caught up with me?
Did it cost me my child?
“My baby,” I beg desperately. Tears are pouring unchecked down my face. “Where is my baby?”
She looks at me finally. For the first time, she looks me right in the eye and sees the panic on my face.
“Oh, honey,” she says. Her eyes soften. “Don’t worry.”
I try to breath, but nothing helps. Nothing will help but the knowledge that my child is okay.
“We’ll bring him up momentarily,” she tells me. “He’s just fine. He’s beautiful.”
I feel relief rest over me like a warm blanket on a freezing cold day. I fall back against my pillow and breathe deeply, taking in as much oxygen as I can.
He’s okay.
Oh, God. Thank you. He’s okay.
Wait.
“He?” I ask, looking up at the nurse again.
She smiles. “You didn’t know you were having a boy?” she asks.
“No,” I admit, almost embarrassed for some reason. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
A second later, another nurse walks into the room, but I don’t register her at all. My eyes are focused on the blue bundle in her arms.
I sit up immediately, ignoring the slicing pain in my stomach.
“Easy there, honey,” the blonde nurse cautions me. “You’re fresh out of surgery. You need to go slow.”
I nod impatiently, but I lift my hands up and out, waiting for my baby to be placed in my arms.
The second nurse walks forward and puts the little blue bundle in my arms.
I see a flash of dark hair—a mess of it, really—and then I see his eyes.
“Hello, little bird,” I murmur.
I stare down at my son, unblinking. He’s gorgeous. More beautiful than my imagination could have ever concocted.
And he looks like Artem.
The resemblance is indisputably obvious. He has Artem’s coloring, lighter than mine. He has Artem’s square jaw, his angular nose, his straight and direct gaze.
The only thing that I recognize that has come from me, are the eyes.
My son has large hazel eyes, framed by dark eyelashes. I can see my own reflection as he stares up at me, as though he’s trying to figure out who I am.
“Hello, little bird,” I say again. “It’s me. Your mama.”
It’s the first time I’ve said the words out loud. Raw emotion wells up inside me. My vision blurs behinds tears, but I force them back, unwilling to lose sight of my son for even a moment.
He gurgles in my arms. I cradle him tenderly as I press a delicate kiss on his forehead.