It's been two years

Two years ago now, give or take some, I almost died because of complications with my pregnancy. And then our premature baby almost died due to a virus infection.

And that was it. We didn't die. We didn't have any major physical consequences from this. We're fine now, bodily speaking.

The baby is a toddler now, two years old. Small and slender but healthy and smart as a whip. Talks like a waterfall, can do anything by herself (she says) and applauds herself and shouts "Bravo!" when she manages something difficult. She eats and sleeps and talks and irritates her big sister and she lives. Very much she lives.

I, on the other hand, am still not myself. I'm locked in. I'm cut off. I'm lonely.

I used to be the life of the party. A happy go lucky type of a person. Charming. Talkative. A bit obnoxious but charismatic.

Now I'm isolated and quiet. I go to work, I go home, I do household chores and look after kids and animals, I cuddle for half an hour with my wife in front of the teve, I go to bed without her because the baby can't sleep without me and she can't sleep with the baby. And then I wake up and we do it all again.

I want to scream about it. But I'm mute.

Everything the same, everything different

She lived and two weeks later we were allowed to go home to her big sister and try to be a family again. That was almost ten months ago now. She was tiny, so tiny and fragile.

She's big now. A big healthy baby. We're a family again. But the world has changed.

The longest seconds

I think there where twelve people in the room for the c-section, not counting Mistress and myself. I have no idea what most of them were there for. I think they all introduced themselves, or a lot of them, but I couldn't really sort the information. It wasn't anything I could do anything about one way or the other anyway.

I remember being really scared before the aenastethics, I was afraid it would hurt when they drove a needle into my spine. It did but not at all as much as I feared.

And then they cut me open and pushed my baby out. It took a lot longer than it sounds like and all I could do was lying still and looking up into the bright light in the ceiling and not have any feeling below ny belly button.

The seconds of silence that stretched out when they had gotten the baby out of me and she was quiet went on for at least an eternity. Maybe two. And then she screamed, an angry little wailing sound, and it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. She lived.