Before they could walk, they already knew what blood meant.
Not the kind from scraped knees.
The kind that meant life flows.
We never hid it.
We never locked doors.
We never said not now.
They learned before language,
because my body spoke first.
The bathroom was never closed
I changed pads,
my daughters brushing their teeth,
my underwear stretched between my knees.
They saw red on white and asked, “Are you hurt?”
I said, “No, I’m healthy.”
That was the truth.
We had other bathrooms.
We used one.
Because privacy was never the same as shame.
So they grew up knowing that wombs reset themselves,
that blood is part of rhythm, normal, regular,
that a woman can bleed and make lunch in the same breath,
that she can shuttle her children and leave stains on the car seat.
They didn’t flinch.
They watched.
And they learned what is so.
Skin to skin
Their first breaths were taken on my chest.
Each one of them.
Straight from womb to breast, in a single movement.
Michelle, our obstetrician,
the same woman who delivered all three,
waited until they’d settled.
Then she’d lift each baby for the briefest exam,
check what needed checking,
and return them straight back to my body.
That’s how it began.
That’s how they learned breath, warmth, gravity, belonging,
before language ever came.
And when they cried later,
months, years, even into their tens,
I would rhyme it out loud, the same way every time:
"skin to skin,
skin to skin."
I lift my top, bare my belly,
and pull them to me.
Their breath follows mine.
Their pulse slows.
Their world comes back into rhythm.
We never called it comfort.
We never called it regulation.
We call it skin to skin.
Even as they grew,
ten, eleven, twelve,
when a storm rose in them,
they still came close.
I lift my shirt,
open my arms,
and place them against me,
their cheek to my soft, stretched belly,
until their breath steadies
until their pulse slows.
No performance.
No shame.
Just their skin remembering where they began.
That’s what holds my house together:
my body saying, you’re safe here.