Happy Birthday, Laura!
The gentle airs, breathing a little sigh,
Lift the green laurel, and her golden hair,
And Laura’s face, so delicately fair,
Lets slip my heart to wander far and high.
--Francesco Petrarch
My life came together when I learned I was pregnant, since I had always dreamed of becoming a mother. Then an August day arrived with baby news for me, and my confused, protracted childhood ended.
I kept going to graduate classes and continued to teach Freshman English 101 for the next nine months. The first time I felt my child move inside me, I was sitting at my office desk, looking out at the campus. The first time I heard her heart beat was on my birthday.
A darkness threatened the baby, however. I have epilepsy, and I take medication capable of effecting a number of birth defects. In my naiveté, I hadn’t known that before the doctor told me. I visited the university library to see pictures of cleft palate and cleft lip, since I had no idea what they look like. After I saw the photographs, I shut the book and never checked it again. I determined that I would enjoy the rest of my pregnancy, hope for a healthy baby, and accept my child exactly as she was.
I fully enjoyed my new life. Actually, the first thing I did upon learning that I was expecting was open up a Metropolitan Museum of Art catalog and order children’s books. My husband and I ate a more healthy diet than we’d ever had before. We took long walks. We talked about names. One autumn afternoon, we sat on a bench at Storm King Art Center and looked at the outdoor sculptures. My husband said, “We should name her ‘Laura.’”
On my due date, a green day in May, I was sitting in my evening class, astonished by the intense sensation caused by tiny feet dragging across my ribcage. Women in class told me there was a full moon: surely labor would begin any time. Eight long days later, it did. I woke up during the night of May 11, feeling uncomfortable. I didn’t want to wake my husband too soon, because he had taken a new job just the week before. At 6:00 a.m., I knew the time had come.
I felt every bump in the road on the way to the hospital. Once there, we learned the nurses were on strike, so I spent a great deal of time alone in the birthing room. Hour after hour passed. The next day, the doctor told me we had waited long enough: it was time for a Caesarean section. (I wouldn’t know until later that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, a type of asphyxiation that had killed my mother’s firstborn.) He said I would go under general anesthesia and must sign a consent form. My signature was one long, loose, diagonal scrawl up the page.
It took a long time to climb out of the darkness later. Beyond it, the doctor kept saying, “Kae, wake up. You have a daughter.”
Somewhere in the mists, I smiled and told myself, “You have a daughter. Wake up.”
I struggled to open my eyes. He said again, “You have a daughter, and she is perfect.”
Perfect! No birth defects, no cleft palate. Most important, the baby was alive. She was beautiful, like Petrarch’s Laura. And she was mine. I’ve been a mother ever since, and that is the identity I cherish most.
The gentle airs, breathing a little sigh,
Lift the green laurel, and her golden hair,
And Laura’s face, so delicately fair,
Lets slip my heart to wander far and high.
--Francesco Petrarch
My life came together when I learned I was pregnant, since I had always dreamed of becoming a mother. Then an August day arrived with baby news for me, and my confused, protracted childhood ended.
I kept going to graduate classes and continued to teach Freshman English 101 for the next nine months. The first time I felt my child move inside me, I was sitting at my office desk, looking out at the campus. The first time I heard her heart beat was on my birthday.
A darkness threatened the baby, however. I have epilepsy, and I take medication capable of effecting a number of birth defects. In my naiveté, I hadn’t known that before the doctor told me. I visited the university library to see pictures of cleft palate and cleft lip, since I had no idea what they look like. After I saw the photographs, I shut the book and never checked it again. I determined that I would enjoy the rest of my pregnancy, hope for a healthy baby, and accept my child exactly as she was.
I fully enjoyed my new life. Actually, the first thing I did upon learning that I was expecting was open up a Metropolitan Museum of Art catalog and order children’s books. My husband and I ate a more healthy diet than we’d ever had before. We took long walks. We talked about names. One autumn afternoon, we sat on a bench at Storm King Art Center and looked at the outdoor sculptures. My husband said, “We should name her ‘Laura.’”
On my due date, a green day in May, I was sitting in my evening class, astonished by the intense sensation caused by tiny feet dragging across my ribcage. Women in class told me there was a full moon: surely labor would begin any time. Eight long days later, it did. I woke up during the night of May 11, feeling uncomfortable. I didn’t want to wake my husband too soon, because he had taken a new job just the week before. At 6:00 a.m., I knew the time had come.
I felt every bump in the road on the way to the hospital. Once there, we learned the nurses were on strike, so I spent a great deal of time alone in the birthing room. Hour after hour passed. The next day, the doctor told me we had waited long enough: it was time for a Caesarean section. (I wouldn’t know until later that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, a type of asphyxiation that had killed my mother’s firstborn.) He said I would go under general anesthesia and must sign a consent form. My signature was one long, loose, diagonal scrawl up the page.
It took a long time to climb out of the darkness later. Beyond it, the doctor kept saying, “Kae, wake up. You have a daughter.”
Somewhere in the mists, I smiled and told myself, “You have a daughter. Wake up.”
I struggled to open my eyes. He said again, “You have a daughter, and she is perfect.”
Perfect! No birth defects, no cleft palate. Most important, the baby was alive. She was beautiful, like Petrarch’s Laura. And she was mine. I’ve been a mother ever since, and that is the identity I cherish most.