How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [57]
“I’m going to keep her, Mom,” I said. “Will you help me?”
She gave the saddest sigh in the world.
And then she nodded.
One mid-August afternoon, I was as restless as a cat, unable to sit down for more than six seconds anywhere at all. Poppy watched me carefully and asked if I felt anything that might be labor or if I had a backache.
I snapped that I did not, and she put me to work in the kitchen, baking a loaf of straightforward sourdough from my grandmother’s starter. The smell of it eased me, and as I was kneading the dough, I did start to feel the oddest sensation, like a ripple moving from the outside of my belly inward. It didn’t hurt, but when I put a floury hand against my apron, my stomach was as hard as a boulder. The sensation went away after a minute, and I finished the kneading. Just as I put the loaves on the rimless baking sheet we used for baguettes, I felt it again—a long, slow ripple, like a gathering. I said, “Poppy?”
She came into the kitchen. “Feeling something now?”
“Maybe. But I don’t want to leave the bread.”
“Babies don’t care about bread. We’ll put it in the fridge to proof and bake it tomorrow.” She laughed and hugged me close. “I’m so proud of all the things you’ve learned this summer, sweetheart. Do you have any idea how much I love you?”
A big tight fist grabbed my belly and squeezed hard. “Ow! I think this might be the real thing. Feel it.”
She put her palm on the rigid rise. “Yep. We’d better get moving.”
“This is too early, though! Will the baby be okay?”
“Honey, she’s due in eleven days. This is not all that early for a first-time mother.”
Sofia Adelaide Gallagher was born in the hospital birthing room at six minutes before midnight. My labor was as ordinary as they come—progressing through each step as if to illustrate a textbook. Because Nancy was such an experienced midwife, I didn’t have any stitches or tearing, and I had not wanted any drugs, so I was exhausted but clearheaded when Nancy put Sofia’s slick body on my belly while she cut the cord. I put my hands on her back and said, “Welcome.” Maybe it was just the angle in which she was lying, but I swear she smiled up into my eyes and made a soft noise of happiness.
Later, when both of us were cleaned up, I was finally alone with my daughter. She was a solid seven pounds, with little folds of skin on her arms and feet, and plenty of meat on her calves and tummy. I touched her tiny shoulders and toes and nose and ears. She had a lot of dark hair, which was all soft and crazy, but it made her seem much bigger than a newborn. Her eyes were enormous and blue, and as she nursed—taking to it like an old hand, Nancy said—she gazed up at me with curiosity.
“I know,” I said. “I’m amazed, too. It’s kind of crazy that we haven’t seen each other ’til now, isn’t it?”
She paused in her gulping, and we locked eyes, and I felt everything in me shift, turn upside down.
Forever.
I stayed with Poppy for two weeks, learning all the stuff a mother has to do, while my parents got things ready for my return home. Until they saw her, two days after she was born, everybody was still disappointed that I’d kept her, but now they were all as much in love with her as I was.
Not that she was a good baby, necessarily. She fussed when her clothes irritated her, and she didn’t like the heat, so she preferred to be carried outside at night. She nursed so much that I thought I was doing something wrong, but Nancy said that was just how babies ate.
One early evening, Sofia had fallen asleep and I was out in the garden collecting squashes and tomatoes and corn into a basket. My breasts were so big they were in the way, but I secretly liked the full milky enormity of them. My stomach was still a little poochy, but I could get into my old clothes, and the happy thing was, by nursing I could eat a lot and all the pregnancy pounds melted off right before my eyes.
I hadn’t been alone much since Sofia arrived, and it felt great to just be in my own head for a little while. The garden smelled of damp