When Skye was born, one of the first things the main nurse that was in the room with us during the C-section had us do, was try to get in some skin-to-skin time as soon as possible. For normal people, this might have been in a few minutes when they had finished stitching up my wife, and had wheeled her back into her room, possibly after she had regained a modicum of consciousness—but not this nurse, she wanted it now. (But don’t misunderstand me, she was an amazing nurse.)
So they cleaned Skye off, and moved some tubes out of the way, and tried to get her on her chest, but the doctors were still working on my wife, stitching her up, putting various body parts back in, leaving out any that weren’t absolutely necessary, and basically cleaning up a bit. So there was still a large curtain in the way which came down around Chelsea’s neck and shoulders, so there was no room on her chest… so they put this tiny little less-than-a-couple-minutes-old baby… on her face.
So there I was, trying to help place this little floppy baby on my wife’s face, and we finally get her down and she just lays there, there’s a content smile on my wife’s face, and we all just sit there for 3-4 minutes, with a baby on her face.
Some time later, my wife tells me that the best part about that, was listening to her breathe in her ear. They had placed in her in such a way that she was breathing directly into Chelsea’s ear, and her first memories of our daughter are her breaths.
I had several firsts with Skye that Chelsea didn’t get to have for the simple fact that she was strapped to a table, drugged up, and pretty much incapacitated. I got to see her first, hold her first, inspect her first, kiss her first, and a bunch of other firsts that Chelsea didn’t get. But this one, this one is the most amazing of all, and even though I got all those other firsts, I’m a little jealous I didn’t get this one, but glad that my wife did.
After she had told me how amazing it was to have her breathing in her ear, I had to try it. So one night when she was sleeping, I bent down as close to her as I could, and listened…
The connection that grew between us through her little breaths on my ear was completely and utterly unexpected. I felt more love for her in mere moments than I ever had before. It’s simply amazing what a little person breathing on your ear can do to your emotions. I’ve listened to Chelsea’s heartbeat, and I’ve listened to Skye’s heartbeat, and something about listening to another person’s heartbeat makes everything so clear, that this is a person, and they have feelings and emotions and life all their own. But listening to her teeny breaths, the barely noticeable action of her moving life-giving air into and out of her lungs, made her so real, and so mine, and so connected, that I now listen to her breathe whenever I get the chance.
I don’t know what it is about it, it’s the smallest little sound, you almost have to stick your ear in her mouth to hear it, but it’s amazing. It’s a tiny affirmation that I helped create a life, this beautiful little thing, and she is forever connected to me, and I to her, and all of this through tiny baby soft breaths.