““I lay there, depleted and relieved that whatever used to be in my body was now out. Marlboro Man, on the other hand, was stunned. Patting me affectionately, he stared at our newborn baby girl with a shocked expression he couldn’t have hidden if he’d tried. “Congratulations,” Dr. Oliver had said moments before. “You have a daughter.” You have a daughter. In the previous several months of gestation, I’d been so indoctrinated with the notion that we were having a boy, it hadn’t even occurred to me that things might go the other way. I couldn’t even imagine Marlboro man’s surprise. “Good job, Mama,” he said, leaning down and kissing my forehead. The nurses immediately wrapped our little one in a white blanket and set her on my chest. Plop. There she was. Lying on top of me. Writhing and looking pink and pitiful and about as precious as anything I'd ever seen. Marlboro Man grasped my hand, squeezing it softly. “Wow,” he said, almost in a whisper. He stared and stared. We were totally quiet. We could hardly move. My throat began to tighten as I realized what had just happened. The being that had been growing inside of my abdomen, that had tapped and kicked and pummeled me in the ribs and bladder during those final weeks, that had brought me heartburn and exhaustion and weeks of debilitating nausea, was now lying on my chest, looking around this strange new world in which she found herself. It was the most surreal moment of my life--more surreal than any moment of surprise during my courtship with Marlboro Man, the father of this new human that had just arrived on the scene and changed absolutely everything. She had arms and legs and a nose and a tongue, which she slowly thrust in and out of her tiny mouth in an effort to familiarize herself with the sensation of air. She was a person--alive and moving around in a real world. I realized that tears were rolling down my face. I hadn’t even noticed I was crying.””
