Before Jane was born, I was told endlessly of the overpowering love that I would experience the instant my daughter was born. But it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. Terror and shock were the predominant feelings as I collapsed on the bed at the birth center with the shivering infant clutched to me. I experienced the first pangs of mother-guilt as my thoughts plunged inward to the turmoil wracking my body and mind rather than turning outward in instant love and concern for our firstborn.
Our new baby daughter, wrinkled and quiet—not a screamer, nestled sweetly against me but I shook from fear, shock, and exhaustion and could hardly take in her little form. Briefly left by myself while my husband, mom, and midwife were simultaneously out of the room, I was left alone with a terror that blinded me to the beauty of the tiny form now whimpering near my face.
Four hours later saw me and my little family nestled back at home and I could finally take a deep breath now that we were away from the sterile environment of the birth center. I saw our little one more clearly, though still through eyes of fear and mistrust—a mistrust of myself. She was undeniably precious, but how was it possible for me to love her as I should? How was I even capable of such a love? Suddenly the next 18 years of her bringing up crashed down around me and I found myself thinking “I can’t do this,” over and over again.
Life before Jane was marked by stoicism for me. This “Keep Calm, Carry On” mentality has been passed through my family for generations. Stoicism is a wall of pride and a facade of strength that erects a fortress around the heart to keep it from feeling as it ought. The result is a deadness to emotions that, rather than making them go away, causes them to seep deeper into the soul to become a dull ache and a profound unhappiness.
I had slowly grown to believe that I could not feel as others did. My well-kept heart could never be compelled to break the barriers of that wall and it would take months to nurture love and trust as it had when I met my husband. It did take awhile with Jane, I suppose. My unpracticed and timid hands cared for this tiny treasure while my heart stayed barricaded behind stone.
It all changed a few days later, however, after a couple of sleepless nights, a lot of faked smiles, and a few hundred deer-in-the-headlights moments of panic. It was three in the morning, I had spent the past hour trying to rouse my sleepy baby enough to eat, and was settling her back in her bassinet. This tiny child looked up at me in the deep, dark of the night. She was dressed in fuzzy, oversized pajamas with tiny fists balled up on her chest and darkness swaddling her. Just enough brightness was present in the room to reflect on her wide-open, shining eyes. She was helpless, small, and mine.
In that moment, a few days after her birth, not only did those walls begin to crack, but my heart actually increased its ability to love, and the capacity of my soul widened to a depthless expanse. This was a new love that had not existed before Jane existed. It grew inside of me as she grew, starting from the moment I learned of her existence and blossoming in a great unfurling on that quiet night when she gazed at me wide-eyed from her bassinet. It was an irresistible love— a helpless love—a spontaneous and unconditional love.
That is what a child is. Beyond being precious and unbelievably full of purpose and potential, they are living vessels filled with seeds for expanding and creating love. Love that never existed before can burst into being when that child does. Every child has this potential wrapped up inside their tiny but complex little forms from the moment of conception.
Over Jane’s first year I watched with joy as this love blossomed in other hearts as well as my own. Starting with her daddy and grandparents, and reaching to the most distant of acquaintances and even strangers, hearts melted before her big blue eyes and babbling speech. I marveled over and over again that someone so small could change so many hearts by simply existing.
And over that first year, I slowly transformed. Eyes that were so often dry before now welled up with tears at the slightest provocation, and I felt a 26-year-old burden of suppressed emotion lighten. The love was not without its moments of exquisite pain and fear, but I realized that such pain and fear are unavoidably intertwined with such a deep love and they are a price well worth paying for a feeling heart.
Jane’s name means “God’s Gracious Gift”. She came during a trying time of life and did what all children, wanted and unwanted, orphaned and abused, spoilt and ignored, miscarried and stillborn, abandoned and adored, are meant to do: carry seeds of love and grace that are the gift of God to a suffering world, and increase, one heart at a time, the world’s capacity to love.
Happy Birthday, little girl!
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