Birthday Blues?

Elin is 2 tomorrow. Huge cause for celebration, obviously (and believe me there will be celebrations she's having two parties for goodness sake!) but I would be lying if I didn't say I had mixed emotions. Extremely bittersweet memories. The sounds and smells of the maternity ward, the labor, the pain of course!, the expectation, the excitement. Then, she was there. And it wasn't right and nobody was smiling and they took her strait to the resus table and the midwife's face. God, her face, it was white as a sheet. When the doctors ran in like something off the television. I knew she had gone, my baby who I hadn't even seen. I knew she was hovering between life and death. And they worked and worked like ants until a triumphant exclamation "we have a heartbeat". And they lifted her to whisk her to intensive care and the life support machine and they said take a look, take a quick look, Mum. And I couldn't. I couldn't look at her I was terrified, petrified to see her. And words kept coming out of my mouth and I could hear myself but it wasn't me speaking. Then she was gone and so were they and the midwife had taken her hands away from her face and it was over. My baby had been born, I didn't see her or touch her, she was gone to a room of wires and beeps and we were left alone. I told Paul to call my Mum and that's the last I remember. Whole thing no more than 6 or 7 minutes. And in that 6 or 7 minutes, a lifetime worth of change, irreversible and complete.