My Daughter's Baby

"It's a Girl" This was not the first time I'd heard these words, not even the first time I'd heard them spoken in a delivery room. But it was the first time I heard them spoken to my daughter and it was unlike any other moment in my life. Just eight months earlier my daughter Kirsten, only eighteen years old herself, had shyly whispered to me that she was going to have a baby. While I smiled and hugged her, I reeled from a barrage of fears and emotions I could not share with her. I knew our lives were forever changed, and I wondered if we would stay as close as we'd always been. Was she leaving me? Could I let her go? I wanted to hold on my lap just once more before she was all grown up.

But my baby was going to have a baby! Until that moment, I had not realized my own active parenting days were through. In a single sentence, I'd been catapulted to the next stage in my life: I was the mother of adult children. Pregnancy and birth; these would now be my daughter's experiences. Would she have a healthy pregnancy? Would the baby be healthy? Would she still need me?

Through the months of Kirsten's pregnancy, we learned many things, and I grew up a lot. We learned the baby we waited for so impatiently was a girl. I learned my son-in-law, Gary, is a kind and gentle man on the day he actually listened to my opinion about names I like for a little girl. I learned I could have an opinion, was welcome to share in discussions about girl names, pre-natal vitamins, cloth versus disposable diapers, but the decisions would be made by a new generation of parents. I learned I liked that. I discovered I could bask in the glow of their joy, swept along for a wonderful ride, w...

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...e was a form which required a signature. Instinctively I reached for the pen she extended, while memories of notes to teachers, report cards and stitches in the emergency room danced in my head.

"I think this is for me, Catherine," Gary quietly said while taking the pen. I'll always love him for putting his arm around me and squeezing my shoulder while he said it, letting me know he understood he'd taken my baby from me and we would learn these new roles together. For the next four hours Kirsten, Gary and I laughed together, made funny breathing sounds together, and even pushed together (though I don't know how much help Gary and I were in that particular endeavor!). At 6:32 p.m. the doctor, with a grin, announced "It's a girl", and Erin Colleen Lowe entered my life and my heart. And what an Irish temper that child has!