This story was originally published on Sept. 24, 2019 in NYT Parenting.

My daughter loves when I tell the story of her birth. She asks to hear it on her birthday and when we’re looking at her baby pictures. Often, when she’s ill or has had a hard day at school, she’ll ask me to tell it, sometimes twice in a row. There’s one line I always make sure to say the same way — it’s her favorite part: “And then Daddy brought you over to meet me, I kissed you, and he put us cheek to cheek.”

“Cheek to cheek,” she repeats.

When I tell the story, I start by explaining that on the day her dad and I first heard her heartbeat, the doctor picked out Feb. 19 for her birthday. I’d had two hip surgeries previously, and because of a combination of osteoarthritis, hypermobility and chronic injuries, I knew even before I became pregnant that I would need a cesarean section. My daughter is very familiar with my disability; she’s witnessed the ways it’s limited me for her entire life, so when I tell the story I don’t focus on how hard it was for me to carry her in my body, or the bed rest necessary to keep my pain under control. Too many details can bury a 5-year-old, who really just wants to hear the part where she appears. Instead, I jump ahead and tell my daughter that the night before she was born I stayed up late and painted my fingernails navy blue.

[Read our guide on what to expect from a cesarean section.]

Every time I tell the story, I want to get the actual birth exactly right, to draw a picture of a moment so beautiful that her heart feels as full hearing it as mine does telling it. When I explain that the doctor had to make a cut in my lower abdomen and pull her out while I lay on an operating table, I don’t want her to correlate that experience with the two hip surgeries I’ve had since she was born, because it wasn’t at all like those; nor was it like the two surgeries before — it wasn’t scary or lonely. My C-section was the most romantic moment of my life. Better than my engagement, wedding or honeymoon.