It’s the season of good will and I have recently been reminded to pause and extend good will towards the woman who gave birth to our daughter. It’s not something I do very often, being busy just getting on with being a mum myself. But the prompt came from an article I read about a retired nurse’s recollection of working one Christmas eve on a busy labour ward when she was still a student. The ward was full of expectant mums and she had been advised that one of them – whose child was to be adopted – was not under any circumstances to be given her child to hold after it’s birth. When her time came, and she delivered a baby girl, the baby was quickly whisked away, but the mum begged to hold her just once. The nurse being a student didn’t know what to do and eventually gave her the infant to hold. The mum then tenderly kissed her baby and said quietly “I love you. My own little Christmas Carol”. They had a quick cuddle before Carol was taken away and given to a foster mum to take home. The tenderness and love of the birth mum towards her child stayed with the nurse over the years and she found herself thinking of her at Christmas time and wondering how both mum and child were doing.
It got me thinking about my own daughter’s birth and how intimate it must have been for her and birth mum in the moments after she was born. I never really thought about it before but how can there be anything more intimate than giving birth? I will never be a part of that bit of her story and yet it’s a massive part of her. This Christmas I would like to thank her birth Mum for delivering my beautiful daughter. I will never forget that she came from you.
