pookie had her baby and I'm making it about me
for all the moms who had births they didn't expect
pookie, aka campbell puckett, aka 1/2 of pookie and jett, had her baby.
the new arrival’s name is paloma campbell puckett, which is so cute. I love when moms use their maiden names as a baby’s middle name. but can I tell you guys something kinda embarrassing?
when I saw pookie’s gorgeous post-birth photos where her little one is curled up on her chest and they’re having skin-to-skin in that all-exalted golden hour after birth in which apparently you bond in a way you never can at any other time in life or something, my stomach hurt. because – though I’ve never talked about it publicly – my birth was… not great, to put it lightly. it went almost as bad as could have while still ending up with my daughter and myself being okay. it was a nightmare with the best possible outcome.
if I’m being vague, it’s because I still don’t know how to talk about what happened. I’m still trying to figure out how to feel. seriously, I started therapy again yesterday to try to deal with the ~trauma~I’m jealous of pookie. I wanted these photos. I wanted this moment. I wanted my husband and I to meet our daughter together and to have pictures of that earth-shattering, life-changing moment for the rest of our lives. but things went badly and my husband met our daughter without me. I was under anesthesia, not even conscious when he held her for the first time.
it kills me a little, seeing these photos. I have pictures of the first time I met my daughter but I don’t like looking at them because of that faraway, glazed look in my eyes from the anesthesia that was just beginning to wear off. they’re not the pictures I wanted to have. more importantly, they don’t represent the moment I thought I would have, welcoming my daughter into the world with my husband and introducing us to her and holding her sweet, soft body on mine.
this is the truth: I’m jealous of pookie! what a sentence. what a world.
I want moments like pookie’s for everyone who gives birth but I want to take a second to mourn, too – for those of us who had something else. may we one day be able to look at the photos.