They’ve just been born. And now what? (1)

I enter the operation theatre and a dozen people are waiting for me. I am frightened. It’s just natural in this situation, isn’t it? I know that it’s a twin birth and there’s a double birthing team, but I find it a bit too much. The anesthetist – who is kidding around – tells me that my blood pressure has suddenly gone up and asks me if I’m nervous. I wonder that this is the first time I have been to a spaceship. And I’ve heard so many things about epidural anesthesia that I freak out just thinking of it. But in fact, I don’t even notice the shot. At this stage, I can’t think of anything else than the fact that I’ll see Ona and Estel in a little while. I’ll be able to check if they are as I have imagined them for all these months.

Imagination had not betrayed me when I found out who was who. We had always said that we’d have an Ona if it was a girl or an Oriol if it was a boy (as you can see, we had not contemplated having two children for a moment. “Only one kid to give it a try”). So we had chosen just one name: Ona. But- what about the other one? A good friend told me not to worry, because the little one herself would tell me what her name was. One day, I found out that her name was Estel. But which is which? How will I know when they are born? I felt the need to identify them while they were in my belly to be able to speak to them and to establish a good communication to understand each other (especially at night, when Ona would not stop moving and would not allow me to sleep at all!).

I’m lying in the operation theatre. Not until they start performing a c-section on me does my mind fully react and then I realise that they’re actually performing a surgical operation. I can only think: “When I come round and the anesthesia wears off I will have a hell of a time”. Because of the feeling that they’re stirring up my body, I have my head in the clouds when the midwife asks me to look to my right because Estel is coming out. I see a ball covered in blood to my right. Suddenly, they put Estel’s face on my cheek. I’ve been imagining what this moment would be like for months, too. Obviously, I do nothing in the way I imagined it. I stare at her. It’s 10:53 in the morning. I don’t have time to react. Three minutes later Ona comes out. They also place her on my cheek. She’s smaller than Estel. I don’t cry. I am so frightened that I can’t be moved right now. My mind can only think about asking whether they are well.

Yes, they’re well. They let me know that they're taking the babies to meet their father. I try to imagine how Jordi will react. Are they just as he imagined them? What will he say? What will he do? Some hours later, he’ll tell me about the funny situation he was in, sitting in the middle of an operation theatre corridor holding a baby on each arm. When people passing by congratulated him, he told them that we were waiting for them to arrive and about all the things we would do together. After a while, he does not recall if it was five minutes or half an hour, he asks for help to go up to our room with the two babies. They will have to wait for me for a while.

PD. I must explain, for all English readers, that 'Ona' means 'wave' in Catalan, my mother tongue. And 'Estel' means 'star'. We found two names closely related to the sea, the wind and the sky...