And so it begins

I'm a new mom. My daughter was born on March 14th (to borrow from Tina Fey, vaginal birth, epidural, did not poop on the table).

She was born with two minor issues: a deep dimple just above her bum (my husband thought on first seeing it that she had an unusually high bum) which was of a small concern because he has a mild form of spina bifeda, and a skin tag in her vagina.

I was devastated. I'm sure that post-partum hormones played a role, but I wanted to cry because there were things wrong with her. She was 30 seconds old and I had already let her down.

One of the nurses said that her daughter had been born with a vaginal skin tag and had out grown it, but at that moment I was too busy throwing up to take a lot of solace in that.

We subsequently found out that the dimple was nothing to be concerned about, and that this too would be out grown.

In the intervening weeks several people have told us about the small idiosyncrasies that their babies were born with and my question is this: why did no one ever mention anything like this before?

I think if I had known that things like this are common, I wouldn't have felt so awful about it. As it was I felt isolated and horrible.

Even now, I can't easily bring myself to say 'skin tag in her vagina' because I feel like people will recoil in horror and think she is somehow not perfect. Even typing this, I almost prefaced 'skin tag' with 'small' as if to minimize it when it is already no big deal.

My instinct is to not tell anyone because it is somehow embarrassing and I imagine that is why I have never heard anyone else talk about it. But I am hoping that if I tell the people I know who are expecting, that should the same thing happen to them, they won't feel like I did.