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My sister gave birth to her first child this week. Four days ago, Thursday. At 7:43pm in the evening.

Landen James Pratt arrived. A little late, and hungry. He was big, 9 lbs 8 ounces, 20 ½ inches long. Those details, everyone wants to hear.

She gave birth unaided, in a dimly lit room, without monitors and that nauseating hospital smell. It was quiet, intoxicating. All things hushed.

I’ll remember, probably forever.


…..I don’t remember much about the day Morgan was born. Nor the day before, nor the day before. It’s blurred. I labored, unaided, for 41 hours. I remember almost none of it.

I remember – showering for 17 hours, feet aching, swelling, nausea, pitocin - 25 hours, pushing 3 ½ hours, nothing. Still nothing. Pushed to the edge. Forgetting. Blurred. Feeling abandoned by the only Person who counted. 41 hours is a long time. I remember next to nothing.

…..I have heard that God is in the room when a baby is born.
I certainly dreamed about it.

About how the immense pain would take me to the farthest most edge. And how I would know nothing, doubt everything. And after my tears. After hours would melt away. After we gave all, and had nothing left, he would be born. Glistening. Holy.

God would be there.

I dreamed of it. I told Jared of how, towards the end, I longed for that pain. I longed for the child that grew within me.

I told Jared of how inside, I’ve always been a mother. How the root of it is basic to me. It’s instinctive- This glowing, fervent gift. Pure and full of warmth.

From heaven.

And it has always been inside me.

And when my stomach stretched and moved, when it was real, and our child, so helpless, so small, depended on me entirely, he became my passion as I nourished his little life.

…..When a child grows within you, you walk with God. I’ve heard that. I felt God inside. I felt Him beside me. Companions, we were. Creators.

As He nourished Morgan’s waiting spirit, I nourished his tiny, evolving body within me. I felt heightened, alive. And when the time would come, I would give birth to Our child - Jared’s, mine, and God’s.

We waited for Morgan, Jared and I. Together, spending hours, days dreaming. Me, I spent my life dreaming of this child. My first. My own.

I dreamed of him. Our son. Praying for everything. Praying for all aspects of all things in our lives to be laced with all the blessings needed to get through, the desires of my heart less hidden than before.

I dreamed about birth. About how nothing prepares, nothing educates you quite enough. No one here controls it, at all. Tracy says, “It is what it is”.

…..It is what it is.

I repeat this to myself every day, still. I whispered it over and over as I drove to see my first nephew for the first time.

Morgan’s birth is what it is. The facts are the facts. And it is past now, it’s behind us. Nothing changes it.

…..A doctor, a mere stranger, gave birth to my child. He held him first. He cut his umbilical cord. After all I had done. After all we had done. After our tears, and dreams.

God was there. I’m sure of it. He had to be there, among the eight others- the doctor, the nurses- firmly focused on the job at hand. Though, I must have missed Him. I missed nearly everything. The final push. The burning emergence. The elation. My own child’s birth, I can’t remember much of. I feel robbed, in a way. I’m saddened.

…..Even now, I retrace. I thumb through, wondering to myself, could I have done one thing differently? And if it was done, what would the outcome be?

I chase, always, after things I’ll never know. And know that others, too, question other things. Things that have no answers.

Why my grandparents fell out of love. Why my mother never conceived my father’s children, never conceived at all. Why I could not give birth to my own child.


....Where my perfect child emerged, I have a scar.