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My First-Born<\/strong><\/p>\n When my first-born was formed in my womb, \u2019til the tiredness brought me down. for breakfast, dinner, and tea. eight months gone \u2013 she cheered me on, curled up in the sun, settling into each other, blue-lipped from the tightly-wound cord, her velvet head bloodied and smelling of home, and I felt like I\u2019d lost her, but here she was, winking at me. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Laura Rimmer<\/strong> was born in Liverpool but now lives in rural Scotland where she works as a writer, editor, and women\u2019s sector volunteer. She has a Master\u2019s in scriptwriting. She is published in the forthcoming Southlight<\/em> magazine. She tweets @laurarimmer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My First-Born When my first-born was formed in my womb, she called up to me for seven long weeks but I didn\u2019t listen \u2019til the tiredness brought me down. Four tests I took, unseeing each pair of parallel lines, \u2019til I was eating wine gums for breakfast, dinner, and tea. She danced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19354"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19397,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19354\/revisions\/19397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nshe called up to me for seven long weeks
\nbut I didn\u2019t listen<\/p>\n
\nFour tests I took, unseeing each pair of parallel lines,
\n\u2019til I was eating wine gums<\/p>\n
\nShe danced a jig for my birthday,
\nand when I was building her cot \u2013<\/p>\n
\neven as I struggled to keep it together.
\nWe watched Doctors<\/p>\n
\nso much so she extended her stay by twelve days.
\nShe was sucked out of me, this limpet,<\/p>\n
\nand the paediatrician said, \u2018You were lucky.\u2019
\nShe studied my face,<\/p>\n
\nand I studied her face for the first time.
\nMy stomach was slack<\/p>\n
\nSo I took her home to watch Doctors,
\nand then we curled up in the sun.<\/p>\n