Life

As soon as she said, “It’s a girl,” I instantly covered my mouth. Tears flooded my sight; my body started shaking and jerking a bit as I tried to stop the tears, but couldn’t.

“She’s healthy then?” I managed to ask through my sobbing.

“Yes, everything looks really great and you’re definitely having a girl.”

I looked at my husband who sat beside me with the largest smile covering his face. His eyes marveled up at the black and white images shown on the screen before looking at me and smiling even more.

“Are you OK?” he then asked with a shrinking smile.

“I’m just…” I tried speaking, but the tears kept flowing out.  “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”

The tech left us for a bit to get dressed and compose ourselves.

We were having a baby girl.

Everything looked great and healthy.

And just like that, the fear was squashed. Of course there was always a chance that something bad could happen until or at birth, but for the first time in 24 weeks, I allowed myself to truly be excited; I allowed myself to connect with my baby.

It was so hard prior to that moment. No matter how guilty I felt, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t connect. I was too afraid of losing another baby. I was just too scared to go down the road I went down two years prior. I wasn’t strong enough to deal with it again, and I wasn’t strong enough to push the fear aside… Until that tech assured me that everything measured great and that everything looked good and healthy.

For the first time in over a year, I could finally kick Fear’s ass to the curb and enjoy the baby growing inside of me, enjoy Life.

 

In “On Writing” Stephen King wrote, “The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.”

Write a memoir post – first-person and true – inspired by that statement.

Word limit is 300.