Annie

Thinking back to when Annie was born, it was so extraordinary, so different. Those first days with her were covered in a glow of awe and amazement. She was so little.

We held our little girl, but we didn’t know her. There she was, but where’d she come from? She was new, so new, and so fragile. Her newborn squeak was barely louder than a whisper, and we’d rush with great urgency to comfort her. How slowly we’d pick her up. How gently Joel would rock her, back and forth in his arms.

It happened so fast. I remember leaving Joel for the operating room, still dazed from a short nap I took while the nurses searched for the doctor. The Indian-born anesthesiologist told me in a voice that reminded me of Hyderabad to climb up on the cold operating table and hunch my back. Relax. A nurse held her head to mine while he stuck me…three times. It felt like a giant pin prick, like he was sticking a frozen splinter in my spine. In no time at all, that fuzzy, prickly feeling of numbness began creeping up my legs…

I stared above me at the bright surgery lights and realized with horror that I could see my abdomen reflecting off the glass. There was no way I was going to see them cut me open! While I contemplated how to get the attention of the doctors and nurses rushing around me, someone pulled a blue sheet in front of my face. Thank God.

Joel came in, all decked out in blue hat, mask, and booties. He sat beside my head while they began the cutting. Did this hurt? Did that? The doctor asked me. A minute later I moaned and groaned at this awful feeling of someone pushing and squishing my insides. We heard Dr. Ammodt’s voice, “I see the butt, I see the butt, it’s a girl!”

“It’s Annie!” Joel whispered to me, and our midwife brought her around the curtain for a quick peek.

She was huge! Eyes closed, arms flailing, she was a living, breathing being, all dark pink and spotty white. And what a head of beautiful, jet black hair! Had she really just come from inside of me? How did she fit in there?

“Oh, Melissa!” Joel said in a tone of voice I had never heard before. He rushed to where she was, on the other side of the curtain.

Annie, I remember thinking, Annie? I knew we’d chosen the name, but how did we know it suited her? We didn’t know anything about her!

How badly I wanted to touch her there in the operating room! But I could not, my arms strapped, staring at the cold bright lights. What was happening?

As if Annie knew my thoughts, she let out the most beautiful sound in the world. She cried.

I smiled and my heart filled with warmth. Our baby. Alive. Here.

Joel brought her to me again for a quick peek—she was all bundled up—and then whisked her away. After a blur of stitching me up, wheeling me to the recovery room, she was back, in my arms, making newborn noises, her deep, dark eyes staring into my eyes. Who are you, little girl?

She needed me to feed her, the nurses said, her blood sugar was low. Feed her? Who, me? Could I really do that? I pretended like I knew what I was doing, though it didn’t seem like she was getting anything. Later I was elated to find out her blood sugar had gone up.

An hour or so later, when they finally gave her to me to keep, I wanted so badly to unwrap the layers and layers of thick blanket, and look at every beautiful little part of her body, just to see if it was all there and perfect. I took off her cap, (made out of the arm of a sweater, tied with a piece of yarn) to touch her downy-soft hair, and then peeked at her tiny toes.

Unfortunately, the nurses stopped me. She needed to keep her temperature up, they said.

The next hours and days in the hospital were a blur of drowsiness from Percocet and of visitors bringing pink dresses, pink blankets, and pink balloons. All I could think about was our baby’s sweet, perfect face. At night I kept waking Joel up to go and get her from the nursery. “Just to look at her,” I said, also convinced the nurses wouldn’t bring her to me the moment she was hungry. I just wanted to hold her close to me and smell her hair.

When it was time to take her home, (we had waited and waited for confirmation of the doctor’s release) I went through the fifty outfits I had packed to find out which suited her. (It was a lot.) The nurse cut off Annie’s tracker anklet and wheeled us out in a wheelchair. We were free!

I remember first putting her in the car seat. She was like a tiny pearl in a huge clamshell. It gobbled her up. She looked so uncomfortable hunched over but she fell right asleep.

Now that seems like forever ago. Now it’s no longer little Annie we don’t know but Annie who laughs her cough-laugh when you talk to her, and likes to stand up on her legs; Annie who whimpers and whines when she’s tired; Annie blinking, resting on our shoulder, arms straight out, just woken from a nap; Annie who says Ah-goo and stares at her “power hand” (the right hand always raised, clenched in a fist…it’s her new thing); Annie listening to guitar; Annie going potty; Annie who stares at everything, coming more aware of the world at every moment…

…Annie whom I love, and grow to love, more and more every day.