Today is the day my eldest daughter turns 12. If I remember it right, she was due to be born around August 20+ or so. But since I was very mobile then and didn’t even have a maternity leave set on a certain date, she came in earlier than expected.
I remember going to the Folk Arts Theater on the night of 11th August with hubby to watch the First Manila Jazz Festival. We enjoyed the show being jazz enthusiasts and hubby being a musician of sorts since he plays the keyboards (synthesizer) well.
Maybe it was the thumping and the rhythmic beating of the various musical instruments, maybe it was stress on my part when we couldn’t get home yet because the car broke down near Rizal Park around 2am that prompted her early arrival.
When we finally got home, I felt something warm oozing down my legs. I didn’t know that my water bag broke. I just thought I was feeling uncomfortable and needed to go to the bathroom.
Around 7am, I was convinced I am about to give birth. So we called the doctor. We arrived at the hospital at 8am. Had some labor pains and gave birth to her around 1pm. Not bad for a first-time mother, so they say. But of course, I passed out due to exhaustion and the doctor had to get her through forceps, which incidentally was used on me too when I was born.
The pregnancy though it was an easy one, had its share of bumps along the way. I had bouts of dizziness which made me unconscious due to heat. I was a little stressed because it was just me and hubby and I didn’t know what to do. I had to scrimp on pregnancy clothes since I don’t find it practical to spend on such clothes because there were too many expenses to be made and bills to be paid once my baby is born. I had Bell’s Palsy during my full term. I was not able to breastfeed her for a long time, much to my chagrin.
Now my baby girl is almost a teener.
She has grown a lot, in more ways than one. She has reached a certain stage in her life where there is a strong personality emerging but there are also sensitivity, warmth and childlike qualities that she still possess. We may not see each other eye to eye in some issues but I know that she is turning to be a responsible and lovely young lady.
It is she who wakes up earlier than me every school morning, preparing to cook rice for her lunch while I cook her viand upon waking up.
It is she who cleans the living room with pee and poop of the pup she promised to my MIL that she will take care of.
It is she who washes the plates when I am too tired.
It is she who religiously give the dog(s) bath every Saturday morning.
It is she who goes home first in the house on days that we are not there and prepare things I ask her to do.
Though she sometimes hugs the phone as if it is her life line, she can be asked to put it down with several warnings at times but she does what she is told to do so. Though she can be so persuasive to the point of being a “pest”, we owe it as her way of getting on our nerves at times her points of view said. Though she at times talk to us in a manner that may sound rude to others, we see it as a way that she doesn’t necessarily believe in backing down from a “fight” if she knows she has a point.
I know she knows how hard it is to be a mother, to be a parent because she tells me so. She is willing to make sacrifices and/or compromises if we can not give her what it is asking for if it is not yet the right time. At the end of the day, I know she enjoys her life being our daughter because she would rather stay at home than go somewhere else. She even said this yesterday: “After we go to church at 11am (we offered a mass for her), let us just stay at home for lunch like any normal Sunday.”
Thank you God, for this gift, this blessing we call our Trixie, our beloved eldest daughter. Thank you anak.
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Lessons in Life, My Family, My Thoughts, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
). I could never thank you enough and of course, I didn’t know I could click your name down there and go to your blog. My bad! Thanks for greeting my daughter.