Happy Birthday to My Christmas Baby

Christmas has always been a special holiday in our family. We enjoy every bit of the season: the smell of greenery, the candles on the mantle, putting out the stockings I’ve handstitched, the music, the colors and lights. I love the Christmas morning anticipation as antsy kids wait to see what’s in the packages under the tree, watching the kids opening their stockings and the carefully chosen gifts, snuggling on the couch afterward, eating a cozy candlelight dinner.

Two years ago I was hugely pregnant during the holiday season, due December 20th . “Oho, think it’ll be a Christmas baby?” people would chuckle. I’d laugh and say something equally silly like “Wouldn’t that be fun?” All of my gifts were wrapped by the middle of November. I had detailed Christmas Day instructions for my mother-in-law who was planning to stay with the kids while I was in labor. December 23rd I burst into tears and cried all over my husband because I wouldn’t be holding my baby on Christmas morning.

Christmas Eve rolled around. Off to my mother-in-law’s for a family evening, then home to fill stockings. “Whew! Almost done filling stockings. When I finish let’s run in and have this baby and be home in time for gifts tomorrow,” I joked with my husband. All done stuffing stockings, I bounded up the stairs (As huge as I was. Why was I running?) and felt a trickle—my water broke. I called the midwife and my sister, and not long afterward I started having contractions. Funny the details that stick in my mind: The midwife turning on the lights at the birth center, rocking in the rocking chair telling myself “Let go” with each contraction with that inward awareness that comes when your body takes over, wondering if the baby was the girl I’d hoped for, the midwife rubbing my feet and my sister holding a cool cloth on my forehead, looking at the newborn pictures of my other children and thinking that I couldn’t wait to hold my baby in my arms. The labor was strong and hard, and around 5:30 a.m. my beautiful baby was born. “It’s a boy!” my sister told me. “I knew that,” I thought, because even though I hadn't officially known, I knew. “I didn’t really want a little girl, I wanted this baby just exactly as he is.”

Memories after the birth are another jumble of impressions: Nursing for the first time and crying on the phone with my sister in Ireland because I missed her, the nurse triple-checking my son’s weight (10 lb., 9 oz.), my husband bringing me chicken-and-dumplings which was the best meal I’ve ever had in my life, the other children meeting their little brother then going home for breakfast, napping with baby and waking to the sunlight streaming in the window. And the quiet. The quiet was marvelous. No cars. No voices. No sounds. It was as though the world had stopped.

I was home by noon, watching the Christmas bustle while holding my sweet baby in my arms. He came home without a name, and was nameless for two days. On the third day we named him Levi, which means “united” or “joined together." As we approach his second birthday I can’t believe how these two years have sped by. That sweet infant that slept in my arms is running around and talking and playing Hot Wheels with his brothers. His birth has changed at least one of our family traditions: We’re having a birthday celebration after dinner, with balloons, and instead of baked apples and poached pears for dessert, we’re having birthday cake. Yum!