1 year ago

"We did it!" 12 mums on the very first words they said after giving birth to their babies

"We did it, baby!"

Those very first moments after having just given birth is by far the most intense in your life.

What I remember most is that feeling of getting those brand new, warm and slippy babies placed in my arms. Everything else just melts away.

It's a combination of things, of course, that makes you not remember the exact fragments of what happened in those moments after birth. The exhaustion. The sheer relief it is over. The joy of meeting your baby for the very first time. You are a bundle of hormones and tears and happy delirium. It is a moment so profound you will wish you could stop the clocks and bottle it up, trust me.

I do however remember what my first words to my babies were – much as I can't remember much else. With my eight-year-old, I could feel her being born and asked the midwife: "What is it, what is it??" The midwife, knowing how much I had waited for this very moment, simply lifted her up to me and said: "I'll let you see that for yourself". Then, to my husband-to-be: "It's Nahla." (We had agreed on names already, whether the baby turned out to be a boy or a girl.) When three years later my little boy was born, the moment was in many ways much the same. When I finally (after a lot of "I can't do this anymore"!) got him in my arms and discovered I had a baby boy, I remember whispering "Hi Luca" to him. My boy.

Some American mamas recently shared what the first words they shared with their babies were. As predicted, some are sweet. Some hilarious. And some just filled with pure and simple relief:

1. "We did it, baby!" – Lacy

2. "That wasn’t as bad as I thought!” — Danielle

3. "I just need a minute.” — Dana

4. “Oh my God, she’s a girl!” — Elizabeth