By Bethany Kandel
The first time you get to hold your newborn baby in your arms after birth is one of the most magical moments of parenthood. After nine months of dreaming about your baby, you finally get to meet your little one in the flesh. You count the tiny fingers
and toes, admire the mop of hair (or the beautiful baldness), caress every soft inch of skin, inhale the sweetness of your little angel and give your first hug. You can’t believe you created this amazing creature.
Meeting for the first time is when you truly fall in love. Here are some stories parents shared with us:
- “We tried to get pregnant for two years, so when the nurse finally handed my baby to me, the experience was beyond any expectation I had,” says Kelley McCarron of Mount Prospect, IL. “I looked into that little face and boom! ‘There you are,’ was all
I could say to her. It was as if I was waiting on her my entire life. She was the missing piece of my family of two. She belonged. And here she was.”
- Dreena Whitfield of Carteret, NJ, writes: “My son Gabe is 19 months now and honestly to see him for the first time was life-changing. There was an instant connection and overall feeling of love and selflessness. Even though I had carried him for nine
months it was still a bit surreal to actually see him, hold him, hear his cry. Even when I think about it today it blows my mind that I'm someone's mom.”
Sometimes loss makes the first hug even more special.
- “After a year of trying to conceive, losing our first child and nine months of waiting to meet my son for the first time, I didn't think I'd have words to describe our first meeting,” says Victoria Schneider of Dallas, GA. “When they laid him on my
chest his hands immediately found my fingers and wrapped themselves around them. He was quiet and I couldn't speak. I just looked at him and cried happy tears; tears of joy. He was bigger than I expected and I could already feel the connection between
us. As I quietly sobbed he placed his other hand on my heart as if to say, ‘It's okay Mom, I'm here now and I love you.’"
And dads have some of the same feelings:
- “I will never forget the moment I watched my son take his very first breath,” says new dad Jordan Fried. “Nine months of anticipation and preparation did not even remotely prepare me for how I would feel in that moment. Seeing him ("Yes Mr.
Fried, it's a boy!") enter into the world and have him placed into my hands gave me an overwhelming feeling of pure love, gratitude and joy all at once. Any fear and anxiety that had managed to creep in during the last few weeks ('Am I going to be
a good father?' and 'What if business goes South?', ran regular laps in my head) completely washed away the moment I saw this little life look right into my eyes and gasp his first breath. Don't get me wrong -- he was a gooey, slippery, almost
alien-looking little guy, absolutely -- but he was my gooey little mess. And in his eyes I saw an entire new lifetime of deep, unique and beautiful experience just beginning. I held him close. He settled immediately. We both knew we were
home.”
The bottom line is that it’s an awesome meeting whether it’s your first child or your third.
- “I’m the mother of a soon-to-be five year old, a three year old and another (yes, third boy) on the way” says Maryland mom Jacqulyn Priestly. “Meeting my oldest for the first time was emotional. My mom and I cried in the delivery room and my husband
stood there with so much pride and the biggest smile I had seen on his face since our wedding day. Our first hug was the moment when I felt like, ‘You’re mine….well, ours.’ When my second son was born 20 months later, I was less consumed with the
delivery itself and more excited to meet our little guy, to smell him, to have that skin-to-skin feeling of their touch. And now, I have to admit, I’m all too excited to experience that newborn hug all over again in a matter of weeks.”
Image : Getty