First Kiss, Precious Gift

Our first kiss was unexpected.
It was surreal.
It was one of the most beautiful feelings I had ever experienced.

You might think that this was my first baby. But it wasn’t. My most memorable first kiss belonged to my last born, my 5th child. I remember it most vividly because I didn’t take it for granted like I did with my first three.

Emotionally, I was a different person than I had been before, and I’d realized that getting pregnant doesn’t guarantee a healthy baby 9 months later. It was different because I didn’t actually believe that my babies had been delivered, alive, until that moment.

As I lay on the operating table getting put back together, I heard their cries, but they were in unison so I thought something terrible had happened to my last, my John. I know why I thought John must be the silent one but I was wrong, so wrong.

He was the “healthy” one…..as healthy as a 33 weeker can be, and he was the first to be brought to me. Before the surgery I had resigned myself to not being able to touch or hold my babies, so it was an unexpected gift, a granting of something I can’t define when the neonatalogist brought me John. I kissed him and knew that my life had changed forever. He was itty bitty. So tiny, yet seemed so robust. For the first time in months I felt a real glimmer of hope. I felt sure that I would actually bring my boys home, despite the odds.

When Jacob was brought to me the kiss was different. It was a kiss of understanding. A kiss that seemed to know that he was ill and would have a harder road to travel than his brother.

But John’s kiss…….that was the kiss that told me everything would be alright, that our lives had been changed forever.

I’m thankful for that first kiss, a precious gift I’ll always hold dear.

To read more “first kisses” visit Scribbit’s blog on the 19th to see all the entries of the “write away” participants.

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