For me the moment was lovely.  I liked the feeling of my back straight and strong and my feet on the floor.  I liked the feeling of my many parts breathing and being still.  I laughed like a Buddha fat with enlightenment.  For a moment I forgot that I dislike my fat and have already developed a plan for shedding it once the child has freed herself from it.  For a moment I was joyful in my skin.  For a moment I was quiet.

During all this I was alone with the nurses. My parents, I knew, were somewhere in town for the baby’s birth, but where I did not know. Jay, it seems, had dropped me off at the hospital and gone off to do something else while I delivered. Now that I was stuck with nurse-obnoxiously-slow, Jay called me and wanted to know how big the baby was. I couldn’t tell him. No-one had told me and I hadn’t seen the baby yet. I asked the nurse what the baby weighed. She told me I would have to look at the official paperwork — only I didn’t have it or know where to find it. I was beginning to realize that I also didn’t have my baby or know where to find her and the nurse was obviously not going to be helpful.

I don’t remember searching for the baby, but I must have because in the next part of my dream I was returning to my room only to find it occupied by a roommate, her baby, and about thirty of her closest family and friends, three of whom were sitting on my bed. Though they noticed me come in, no-one would get up and give me a place to sit. I felt so helpless and tired and alone and all I wanted was my baby . . .

The rest of the night I spent dreaming various dreams in all of which the baby was missing and all I wanted to do was find her. “Where is my baby?”

Sounds upsetting, no? Strangely, no. I must admit to a few moments of anxiety during my frequent nighttime bathroom breaks . . . but in the morning, with the memory of these dreams vivid and sharp, I woke with a feeling of absolute joy and hope and delight, a feeling of utter abandonment into overwhelming, breathtaking, passionate love for this little creature wiggling and kicking around inside of me. My baby. My little flesh-and-blood reality tucked safely beneath my ribs. The delightfulness of my delight was beyond words. Where before I had felt fear and doubt, even an occasional desperate wish that I could rip this child from my womb and be done with it all, I now feel every bright hope of my life being fulfilled. I have fallen in love . . . and I did it wandering through the mocking, empty halls of a dream.