Eze

I vividly recall the overhead lights, the incandescent circular orbs that - in the midst of labour-induced delirium - looked like they were descending from the heavens. Maybe this was what it was like to transition into the afterlife, I thought to myself, as the bone-shattering contractions made their merciless march up my back, across my abdomen and into every atom of my body. Those who shared tales of near-death experiences talk about this light that beckons them forward, calls them home. In the haze from the waning epidural and the waxing contractions, I wondered if maybe the cosmos was proffering a glimpse into the mysteries of the universe - a recompense for experiencing the singular agony that is protracted childbirth. What befuddled me was whether this was simply a glimpse, or the curtain call of my final act.

But then the obstetrical nurse’s voice penetrated to the lucid parts of my mind, reminding me that my body would know what to do - even when I felt disembodied, simply watching the events unfold like an omniscient narrator. Swiftly, it began: the ushering forth of life, slowly then all at once. 

Delivery of my first baby, a boy we had ceremoniously named Ezenna, Eze for short, was imminent. Every moment of my pregnancy flashed before me like a silent film noir; the positive pregnancy test in the bathroom of our first home, the first ultrasound where he looked more bean than baby, the anxious scramble for summer-appropriate maternity dresses, the first butterfly flicker in the womb, the trivial bickers over nursery room colours. Every minute, every hour, every moment spent wondering who would look like, who he would be, was collapsing into this moment. 

And there he was. 

It’s cliché, but it’s true, how quickly we - as mothers - forget the pain of childbirth. How the edges of our memory grow fuzzy and dissolve when that final push is rendered. How quickly the pain combusts into a love so deep and unrelenting you forget how to breathe as your baby draws their first breath. I knew, when I pulled him to my chest, my sweet boy, that I would never be the same again. 

Eze was born that rainy December evening, and I, too, was born anew.