Q

Where it all begins: your tata’s firm hand on my brow.

A clean cry ringing with life fills the operating theatre, and something new bursts open inside me: a portal, a previously unknown gateway to love. I cry along with you.

And comes the longest two minutes I’ve had to wait, waiting for the sum of my entire heart to be safe. A tug, the pain goes up to my shoulder. Then your cry, rife with vigor, joins your brother’s cries and your tata’s voice. Another burst, another portal.

Everything feels whole.

Half a meter down they were sewing my sawed up body back together again.

Two new little humans I can scarcely believe are mine, are now entirely in my arms and my care. I cannot yet process that you are part me, but I see so much of your tata in you. All i know is that i will keep you safe and love you all my life.

I feel myself, but augmented — stretched, grown, made more by you. Not physically (I’m pretty much back to my pre-pregnancy shape, thank you Asian genes), but in every other way.

I, who would not wake in the middle of the night for anything, do so willingly, effortlessly, for you. In the huff and whizz of the electric pump, I gaze at the dozens of photos I’ve taken of you that day, my smitten grin thankfully obscured by the dim flourescent glow of the Spectra. In any case, I am alone, just me and my fawning over two little angels.

Nothing is too difficult, if done for you.

Not when you make your little dinosaur squeaks while nursing, with your little rosebud lips pouting in your sleep, your tiny fingers and toes like fresh pearls and just as precious.

Your tata, right now, has given up his beloved bed at home to sleep in a hotel. No, he is not a staycation kind of guy. But for your health he does so without a complaint.

This is a life your tata and i have held hands and walked gratefully, bravely, into. A life dedicated to each other and you.