Got-It-Together Girl

It's all a bit harder than I expected, this bringing a person into the world.

No more needles, no more crying over failed cycles. No more heartburn and swollen ankles. I'd have my little girl and that would be that. I would dress her in tutus and bows, a summer in strollers at the mall, breastfeeding alongside my best friend in the women's lounge at Nordstrom, comparing our girl's ruffle butted patooties while we shopped and lunched.

It was supposed to be giggles and cooing, perfection. I captivate roomfuls of professionals, sign deals over lunch. I have it all figured out. I'm got-it-together girl, don't you know?

Maybe it was the unexpected trouble, the c-section I never wanted. Maybe it was the infection, the drugs, the five days with chills and night sweats, the doctors telling me I couldn't breastfeed for 24 hours because they needed to do CT scans and shoot me full of contrast.

The 24 hours that it took for my little girl to become a formula junkie.

She'd shoot it up if she could.

And, I sit devastated that the girl who swore she'd never breastfeed when she was a smartass and a singleton, couldn't give her child this one thing. So, I pumped until my eyes crossed and the sleep deprivation turned my marriage into a tenuous and strained union. I pumped while my husband watched the freezer fill with bags of milk and his wife turn into a shadow of who she had once been. I pumped until I had two month's supply and my doctor put his hand on my knee, "Can we be done with this? You look exhausted. You need a break and your daughter is not going to die because she has formula."

And, she's not. She grows like a weed, a 90th percentile kind of weed who hits all of her milestones and smiled at me for the first time last week.

It was beautiful, simply put.

And I cried.

I cried because all I ever wanted was to have a baby look up and smile at me and God, did it take a fucking lot to get here. I remembered that I wanted it with my husband and we spent four years forging our marriage into something very special, something stronger than hormones. So, we had to find each other again since we'd become strangers in our own house.

We hated what had happened and promised not to forget each other again.

Our family is coming together.

I held Livi today, her head nestled in the crook of my arm and thought that I'd never realized that I'd gone through my life with this elbow and this arm and it was made specifically for her little head. I was meant to be her mother, Mr. J's wife and a bunch of other things that I'm suddenly figuring out.

This got-it-together girl may have been knocked on her ass, but I have to admit...

I kinda like who it is standing up from the fall.