Astonishing Good Fortune

On The day you were born

by

Georgia Sutton, 2001

On the day you were born I was ready.

You took an age to emerge but when you were ready

You entered our world with a bump.

Astonished, I lifted you and held you. We cried.

Your father cradled you as the midwife gave you oxygen.

We drank you in, your mullet of long, black hair

and eyes, bottomless saucers of dark, navy blue.

You were so much bigger than that tiny yellow suit

We dressed you, fed you, bathed you, rocked you and didn’t want to put you down.

You and your daddy fell asleep, but I was too excited.

I sat and watched and I couldn’t believe my luck.

I was just trawling through some old stuff and found this that I wrote after my eldest son was born.* He is now 10 and a quarter, funny, empathetic, brave and kind. Astonishing still.

I still can't believe my luck.

* Tania's comment has just highlighted to me that this is a wee bit misleading. This poem was, in fact, written several months after J's birth through the rosy glow of hormones and hindsight, when I had a bouncing baby boy on my knee, and the trauma of birth and sick newborns was well behind me. I would hate to give anyone the impression that I sat serenely in my hospital room after his birth, in a silk negligée perfectly coiffured, upstairs and downstairs, with my moleskine at the ready for the muse to pour forth, as this poor bit or writing above would suggest. In my hospital room I was gobsmacked, pale and rooted from 2 days of labour, stitched from a- hole to breakfast, happy and hormonal and wondering why the hell all these people kept putting their hands on my boobs ** - like a normal person.

**Okay, okay, apologies again. I was shooting for 'I didn't have a perfect birth" and accidentally hit the "graphic visuals" mark. My tone-o-meter is way off today.