I started this blog as a joke with the intention of posting brief ramblings about the random ridiculousness that I encounter in my average life. Friday evening, however, I had such an intense experience that this post will be both serious and long. You're more than welcome to stop reading now and wait for the next post.
Wednesday a favorite couple of mine gave birth to beautiful, fraternal twin girls. I didn't realize until these last couple of days how much two of my friends (couple, wife and husband) meant to me. The wife was unofficially adopted by my family since her and her husband are temporarily here in the States and their families are in Brazil. My mom has ner name in her cell phone as "L Filha" (filha is Portuguese for daughter) and I have her in mine as "L Sister" and her nickname for me is Sis. Friday evening I was finally able to go and visit them after work and arrived with perfect timing. As I walked out of the elevator and took a look down the hall to my right I saw my mother, L & L (the couple), and another family friend coming towards my direction. They were on their way to see the ladybug twins.
Interacting with infants is not something new to me. I have a brother who is a decade younger than me and remember clearly when he was born and have been a "part-time mom" to him ever since. My parents have had several friends over the years give birth to kids and recently several of my own friends have had children and I've held and/or babysat several of them before. Despite feeling comfortable around infants I knew that seeing my nieces would at a minimum make me tear up but more than likely I would shed a few tears and feel the general peace and calm that most people tend to feel when seeing newborns. What I experienced next was completely unexpected.
When I walked into the room M was closest to the door and J on the other side. I looked over first at M and she was just waking up and started crying and that sound just made me lose it. I cried. I didn't bawl, but I didn't just shed that one, tiny, lonely tear that I expected. I cried. It was M's crying that just pushed me over the edge. I was really hoping not to cry infront of my mom, family friend, and L & L but M's crying was one of the most amazing things I had ever heard. J at that moment was being pretty quite and being breast fed by mom. I stood there and stared even though, again, I've seen several babies being breast fed in my lifetime. Occasionally I would stop and touch J's tiny foot or look over at M being held by her daddy and then by my own mother. Then I'd resume to looking back at J as my friend breast fed her and just watched. I didn't realize I'd been standing there staring for so long until I got home later that night. It was one of the first things my mom commented on and joked about it to my dad and one of the first things our family friend at the hospital wrote on my Facebook wall:
My mother to my father: "Natalia was so enchanted, she kept staring like an idiot for 15 minutes!"
Our friend on my Facebook: "Nat, I think you got a little hypnotized. Am I right?"
I replied to our friend, "No, not a little. A lot!"
While I stood there in my enchanted, hypnotic, and dazed stupor I experienced the most emotional and spiritual moments of my entire life. The thoughts and feelings that swept over my entire body is something that I can't explain but that I hope I experience again in the future. It was, in all honesty, the most spiritual experience I have ever had. I truly have never felt anything more amazing in my entire life than what I experienced that moment. This is the most amazing high I've ever felt and they're not even my biological nieces.
Like I mentioned earlier, seeing and interacting with babies is nothing new to me. I think that the difference in this situation was being around and growing close to my friend throughout her entire pregnancy. I was only 9 years old when my mom was pregnant with my youngest brother and lacked the intellectual capacity to truly stop, think, analyze, and appreciate the true beginning of life. I was just too eager to see and experience the end result. Also, this is the first time I've known someone to have multiples, that's already pretty big. I'm sure calling L sis, being called sis in return, and always being told to say hi to my nieces only helped to increase the impact of the twins birth. I feel like a true auntie! :)
I don't have any pictures with the twins yet. There's one picture of me holding M (she's the only one I've had the chance to hold so far) but I'd like to post one as soon as I get a chance.
Wow. Just, WOW.
