Letter to Fangs

...how dare your birthday be on Mother's Day??? It's MY day, MY DAY, damn it all...

Happy Birthday Sweetie!!

Just think. One year ago today I was in the hospital screaming my guts out because you had the audacity to start heading out into this world during the nurses' paperwork/shift change hour when no drugs are administered. I shrieked blue bloody murder through the whole miserable ordeal and even, at one point, shouted, "I'm DYIIIIING!!" but not even a measly Tylenol was thrown my way. In response to my anguished cries, your father, always the voice of reason and heavily engrossed in some weighty news article, looked up from his reading and said, very matter-of-factly, "You're not dying, you know," before going back to his paper. Funnily enough, I found this incredibly not comforting at all! So I continued to scream and the Powers That Were continued to not give me any drugs or pain relief until finally you popped out. Well, I'll use the common phrasing there, but really, getting you out was not in any way similar to the opening of a champagne bottle, believe me: It was a lot less fun.

No offense.

When we left the hospital, I was given a questionnaire to fill out. One of the questions was:

How well did we manage your pain? Please indicate all that applied to you.

Epidural _____

Gas ________

Morphine ____

Quick puff on crack pipe (which I MOST CERTAINLY would have brought in with me had I known what lay ahead)______

Cool cloth on forehead ______

My X on the "cool cloth on forehead" option was so filled with bitterness and resentment it ripped through the page. Now, of course, I'm sort of masochistically proud that I did it all sans drugs, but it took a while to get me to that point, let me tell you. I was screaming SO LOUD and all that damn nurse did was continuously shove that wet rag into my face. I could have killed her, and her little wet rag too. But time, as they say, heals all deeply traumatic and mind altering psychological wounds. I'm all over it now. Really.

They say it takes weeks, sometimes even months before a mother truly bonds with her child and falls in love with her, but for me it didn't take that long. On our first night home from the hospital, you were lying on my lap, and yer Pa was off picking up a pizza and suddenly you puked up what seemed like a whole liter of the reddest blood I've ever seen. I panicked, screamed, and started to bawl. Your grandma was there and she shoved me out the door when your dad returned, and we belted it for the Children's Hospital. We didn't bother with the baby seat: I clutched you in my arms all the way there, and, thinking you were dying, stared into your face trying to memorize your features. You were awake and stared back at me in that wise way babies sometimes have. I thought you were dying. I thought you were dying.

When we got to the hospital there was a line-up, but I ignored it and went rushing up to the nurses' station, shrieking, "My baby's vomiting blood!" And the nurses -- well, they didn't even glance up from what they were doing. One actually turned her back on me. The other one just looked very bored.

"So," she asked in a really weary voice, "Are your nipples cracked honey?"

...And... so... they... were...

Ugh! You had been drinking my nipple blood!

When you're old enough to read this, no doubt you'll be even more grossed out by that than I was, but remember this: The whole event was the turning point. It was when you transformed from The Baby to My Baby. That horrific and terrifying trip to the hospital was the moment when I first realized how jagged-rich and cutting-deep my love for you was.

Fangs at three months: "Before the teeth came in"

Happy birthday, Baby.