Summer
2002
For every woman with a story like mine, someone else
has a harder tale to tell.
Because
for a long time, I could not tell this story.
Because I could not clearly remember.
Because I needed to hear my husband Chris tell the story over and over
so that I could understand it was real.
Because
of having to make sure, ahead to time,
that everyone knew that I wanted to hold the baby if she died. Because of having to think of her dying
throughout the day she was born.
Because of the fear.
Because
of the shock of contractions and starting to bleed at 31 weeks, over two months
before the baby was supposed to come.
Because of the rush to the hospital, without a suitcase, and wondering
at each red light if I was bleeding too much.
Because,
paralyzed by magnesium sulfate, I lay
still for three days unable to move any part of me but my head and then not
even that. Because of watching the
clock, trying to remember how long it had been since I had asked my mother and
Chris to turn me and whether it was too soon to ask again.
Because
during one long night, after the mag sulfate had reached higher than
therapeutic levels, nurse after nurse and then doctor after doctor tried to
take blood from my feet (the veins in my arms, having so dehydrated, were
unreachable). Until one doctor said,
“We do not need this blood level to know that the mag sulfate is too high. Turn it down.”
Because
that mag sulfate haze drained all sensation from my body except for the
contractions, and I lost touch with the baby whose presence had constantly
delighted me for seven months.
Because
I went through transition in a waiting room, waiting for the ultrasound that
would tell us that the baby was a girl and also that I had lost all my amniotic
fluid. Because in the waiting room were
a small boy playing war, an old man waiting for his daughter, a pharma rep, and
a pregnant woman who wanted to talk.
Because I didn’t want to scare the child or the pregnant woman waiting
for news of her high risk pregnancy.
Because I was sitting upright in a wheelchair and finally had to ask my
husband to come apply pressure to my back while I waded through the
contractions. Transition is said to
make a woman lose all her inhibitions.
You cannot lose them in a full waiting room.
Because
we had not yet learned anything about “pushing” in my childbirth class, I did
not have any idea what to do with the need to push. I felt like a horse, like a sweaty, rolling-eyed animal in a
barn, until Chris’s voice broke through to help me relax and push that baby
out.
Because
I did not know if she would breathe, but she did.
But
I didn’t get to hold her until we found her in her isolette in the NICU several
hours later.
In
a dark room, my mother and husband leapt up from their sleep whenever I shouted
out “Contraction.” Ice chips in a dry
mouth. The shout and cry we all raised
when the ultrasound technician told us to “tell everybody to buy pink.” “Eleanor,” we cried. My friend’s finger in my face, warning me
not to push while my mother and nurse tore open the delivery bed and the resident
checked me. A labor and delivery room
packed full of blue scrubs; to me, they looked like angels and I said this out
loud. I will always remember two
nursing students, one white and one black, whose faces I watched while I waited
for each pushing contraction.
Eleanor
crying seconds after birth, that small red face opening up to yell. Chris’s confident, straight-backed walk as
he proudly brought Eleanor to meet me.
The
quiet in the hospital unit designed for mothers whose babies were in the
NICU.
The
first NICU nurse, Shelley, a brunette with glasses, who introduced us again to
Eleanor and helped me to hold her that first evening. Chris crying when he lost a few units of colostrum that I
pumped. The surprise, at first changing
Eleanor’s diaper, that she had no bottom, only the little puckery exit.
How
my heart broke when we left Eleanor at the hospital to come home; how it got
worse as we got closer to home.
The
giddiness on the afternoon when we brought her home, 19 days after she arrived.
To
the LaLeche Leader whose sole advice to me was, “If you want to nurse your
baby, you can. It may take a little bit
more work.” It turned out to be almost
true.
(1)
Good fortune, pure luck that after hundreds of bottles, Eleanor was not
confused about her desire to nurse.
(2)
My husband, a student off for the summer, at home for the month of August and
(3) my mother, retired from 30 years of nursing, with us to help take care of
baby while (4) I pumped 8 – 10 times per
day at 10 to 20 minutes a retch.
(5)
“Bossy,” the hospital pump, (6) later
replaced by the unnamed top of the line commercial pump.
(7)
Pumping minutes after I gave birth while Eleanor made her way to the NICU and
(8) the nurses who cheered for those first drops of colostrum, “Eleanor’s first
meal.”
(9) Hundreds of sterile urine specimen cups for
transporting milk to the hospital.
(10) Bottles to deliver that milk to a weak,
three and a half pound baby.
(11) Lactation consultants.
(12)
Web sites for parents of premature infants.
(13) The nurse who decided that it was time for
us to be alone as a family and sent us off to a quiet room to practice
breastfeeding together.
(14)
My in-laws ready to clean house, set up the bed, and give bottles.
(15)
My mother-in-law to cook every meal we ate until baby was two months old.
(16) Chris, not afraid of a tiny baby, to care
for her solo while I pumped.
(17)
Two $40 “hands free” bras so that I could read as I pumped and not think about
how my milk supply was diminishing.
(18)
Special pump kit designed to “massage” (pinch) the breast and stimulate milk
supply.
(19) The good humor of friends to sit in the pump
room and keep me company while “Bossy” worked.
(20) A prayer chain in Madisonville, Kentucky, a
group of women I have never met.
(21) That before Eleanor’s birth, I had planned
to nurse, and the (22, 23) example of my mother nursing my brothers when I was
a girl so that I never considered not nursing.
(24)
A supportive pediatrician.
(25)
Bi-weekly weight checks to make sure that Eleanor was gaining.
(26) Zoloft.
(27)
Therapy.
(28) Yes, formula while my milk supply dwindled
and Eleanor remained too weak to nurse.
(29)
And at the end, the gift of hope from Lynne Humpkey, lactation consultant,
after we had begun to give up and make plans for bottle feeding. She said,
“You have enough milk. Start
nursing every time.”
(30) A feisty daughter from a stubborn mother.
(31) Grace.
I
learned that my daughter has, from birth, skills and strength of her own. The moment she left my womb, she began her
life, and I began the process of watching her live it without the illusion
that I could protect her from it.
Before she ever left the hospital, I learned that she is feisty and
stubborn, that survival is not enough for her, and that she wants to thrive. I learned that life is, after all, hard and
that it is so heart-grippingly sweet. I
learned that my husband (who feared that he would be a distant father, unable
to care for his child) is a natural baby-worshipper, who took to parenting
Eleanor as if he had already successfully raised dozens of babies. I learned
that I apparently have a high tolerance for pain (I would never have guessed
it; I thought I was wimpy; I guess not).
I learned that it takes more than three of us to raise her, that it
takes grandparents, uncles and aunts,
friends, and the “kindness of strangers.” I learned that we by ourselves will never be enough, but that the great grace of the world and of
life can be and can even be abundance.
When Eleanor was born, I thought
that her premature beginning would define our lives forever. I thought that it would be constant grief
and that we would somehow not know how to celebrate her birthday because it
came at the wrong time. Now, here it
has rolled around, and she is one year old.
I would never had guessed that by now, the grief of an early delivery
and of those first hard few months at home would already be fading. I would not have guessed that I would not
have to preface every question from a stranger about her age with “But she’s a
premie, that’s why she’s so small, can’t do as much, etc.” I would not have guessed that all the
difficulty would be gentling into something like gratitude.
Perhaps if I could go back and have
control over our fates, I would have her come at the right time, plump and on
her due date. I have cried a lot this
week, remembering her birth and how it did not happen the way we would have
chosen and remembering out innocence and confidence during the early part of the
pregnancy.
However, I don’t think any more about the desire to change the past. Over this year, Eleanor’s prematurity has become a fact in our existence, a component of our history and personalities. I can now see the gifts which the experience has brought us, and I would not surrender those gifts now if I could. If Eleanor had been born full-term, we would have taken her good health and her normal development for granted. Our joy every day is greater because we were taken to a precipice, we looked over and saw how grief-filled parenthood might be, and then we were allowed to draw back from that cliff and to go on with life with our healthy, bright baby. Staying up all night for months, non-stop nursing, giving up our social lives, and all the normal challenges of living with a baby seemed less difficult after three weeks of living apart from her. Every accomplishment she makes (smiling, crawling, pulling up) can color entire days with delight. Every milestone a full-term baby makes is amazing, too, but we might not have been able to see it as vividly as we do now. And then there are mothers whose stories are harder than mine, whose babies face difficult lives, for whom those milestones are always just out of reach. That could have been my story. If it had been, I might or might not be writing about my gratitude, and it may seem coarse to speak my delight in the face of their suffering. Yet the past year has given us the gift of owning our experience. It is what it is, and we are new people because of it. So we will sing happily on Eleanor’s birthday, we will cut cake and ice cream, and she will smile at her grandparents. Then we will all laugh and cry.