My daughter Sammi turns eleven tomorrow, and when I wake up, I will immediately start down the same well-trod path of many mothers: I will relive the day of her birth.

My realization of this tradition began with my own mother retelling the story of my entry into the world, something she did with diminishing success over the years. As a child, I remember her tale of the planned induction beginning with the Chinese meal she ate the night before. She always smiled and rolled her eyes in mock-overwhelm as she described the obstetrician who lived across the street from the hospital and who padded back and forth all night to check on her as she labored, wearing his bathrobe. She always laughed when she remembered the paperboy poking his head in the door to sell her a paper a few hours after I was born, only to do a double-take at her feet still up in stirrups as the nurse tended to her underside. As the years have gone on, my mother muses over all these details less and less. After more than forty years of remembering, there are now some pieces of the story that I remember better than she does, just from the repetition.

My oldest child — my daughter Ronni — came into the world memorably, and I begin the memories of her birth more than a day before her birthday. I can recount it by the hours, still, fourteen years later. Although much was painful, and much was frightening, I recall the event with joy and celebration. I labored, I pushed, I struggled, and eventually I felt the indescribable sensation of my child passing through the space between my hip bones, my pelvis, and into the world. The beauty of it brings tears to my eyes, still. I can access those emotions easily, quickly, and feel washed in love and wholeness, knowing as I do now that it was the beginning of a relationship marked by tenderness and discovery.

Sammi’s birth is so much harder to retell.

She was born a week late by emergency c-section, inexplicably tiny and riddled with health issues. For years after that day, there was seldom a break from worrying about her, seldom a moment when my body wasn’t called on to continue carrying her somehow — to nurse her, hold her, rock her, drive her to the hospital, drive her to doctors’ offices, administer medicine, hold a breathing mask over her face in the middle of the night, pull underwear up her legs under a hospital gown. I was constantly peering at her ears, her mouth, her nose, checking to see if her ribs were protruding more than last week, literally and figuratively weighing her. I fed her with the intensity of a brand new mother, always.

In many ways, Sammi’s birth — and my labor — went on for nine years. It started on the day of her birth and stopped one beautiful day in October of 2014 when her good health shone clearly and she was, for me, finally born. Just like other labors, in those nine years were moments of pain I didn’t think I was really able to bear and moments of rest when I gathered strength for the surges that were coming. Just like other labors, sometimes I begged anyone nearby for help and sometimes I silently clenched my jaw and squeezed the hand of my husband alone. Just like other labors, I was often selfish and believed the struggle was mine alone, and there were other times when I remembered that Sammi was trying just as hard as she could and that my husband was watching both of us, helpless to do more than offer comfort.

And just like other labors, it finally ended.

Remembering the day she was born is hard. It was the beginning of an uphill climb, and when you climb a mountain, you celebrate the summit with far more joy than you recall the moment you took the first step. There is too much journey in the middle. Still, I know that the day Sammi came into this world is important. It did not have the funny cast of characters my mother remembers from my birth, and it did not include the stirring, empowering moment of my older daughter’s birth, but it was the first hard leg of a journey that we both weathered in the end. What it lacks in positive imagery, I suppose it makes up for in the stuff of character-building.

I love Sammi with a fierceness I cannot describe, with a quality different — though not more or less — than what accompanies my love for Ronni. Sammi and I were in labor together for years. She may grow to forget as much of it as my mother now forgets about my birth, but I will never forget how our bodies were linked, how we strained, and how when it was done, there we were: born.

Happy birthday, Sammi. I’m achingly grateful that you are here.

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