I Don't Want A New Year's Baby!

I’d felt the tingle as I passed through the hospital entrance. It was both fear and excitement; it was both the beginning of the end and the end of my beginning. It was the knowledge that if calculations of my contraction were right that my babe would be another New Year’s baby.

I heaved in a breath of air, strong with the disinfectant chemicals. Another contraction shot through my body. I arched my back in pain, as I screamed while my eyes wept at the future which was before my sweet. My darling whom I’d held as my world, my love for the past eight months. I lay on the bed being prepared. It was five minutes to midnight. My breathing was uneven.

I’d made certain that my child wouldn’t have this fate, by going to the doctor to be sure, going to several doctors actually. I’d watched as my sister’s son entered this world a few years ago.

He entered the world with knowing eyes; eyes that shouldn’t have had the intensity of a sage. Through the first three months he’d grown to the size of a middle-aged man, while teaching himself, whatever he found interesting, and that happened to be everything.

He was the definition of magnificence, brilliance. His appearance was always an awe-striking thing even to us with whom he lived, and his intelligence silenced many. Within the rest of the year he went about righting wrongs in different fields, health, technology, economy.

It was displeasing to my sister. Her first child ripped from her life. She felt robbed and I didn’t want to be far from her babe. I don’t want to be like her. I don’t want to watch my child grow in such an abnormal manner; to be robbed of the childhood we could share, the relationship we could nurture, the love we could deepen over the years.

“Push!” I heard it being shouted from the other end of the bed, along with a soft whisper in my ear. I pushed, I didn’t want to but I did.

I wanted a normal child, my child. Not one that was singled out by nature and man because it was born at the beginning or end or whatever it was. A child that unlike my sister’s would go through being a baby at a normal rate like the others, born a minute before and after that damning moment, a babe who’d remain with me after that first year.

My senses were dulled; silenced for a time.

I prayed that when I woke something would have changed that I wouldn’t have to endure the torture my sister had gone through. Above all I refused to have that part of myself taken from me after a year, never to be seen, heard from or of again. They all followed that pattern; were birthed, changed aspects of the world, and vanished.

We were never, and never will be told, of his location or even if he has one. My sister and I believed they didn’t. She took her life in the depths of her depression and grief, being unable to bear the loss. I don’t want my love to be another 00:00 Baby, another important for one year then forever forgotten.

“Ellen!” someone was calling me, slowly I opened my eyes, tears flooding them.

“What are you going to call your one-minute-late child, my dear?” a smiling voice said.

My body shook with excitement, joy.

“Where is she? Where’s my Ahselih?” I heard her crying voice as she neared. Her face was angelic, and innocent. My baby was mine forever.

As I looked down at Ashelih, I glimpsed a 00:00 Baby placing a toy in a baby's hand. They quickly became engulfed in people, bright flashes and noise. I held my sweet close to me kissing and cooing her gently, giving her all my love.

600 words