Just Beth

You: Is that…?

Me: Yes.

You: Wait, you mean…

Me: Yup.

Me again: Andy. My husband, father to our children… wrote his name in the snow. With his pee.

*****

God, I love him.

Thirteen years ago, the largest part of my heart was taken from my body and placed in a NICU bassinet.

That thing that you sometimes hear of, that immediate mothering thing that some women have and some women don’t… I found it in me. I was terrified, and yet I knew that the ONLY way this baby was going to live was if I stood up and willed it so.

I sharpened my mind. My mind that had for so long lay dormant, letting others decide my opinions. My mind that had slept through beatings and terror. This mind was now absolutely on fire. I listened to every word the doctors told me, and when I didn’t understand something, I asked questions until I did.

My son was born on Friday, December 13 at 3:17 A.M.

At 8:30 A.M. later that morning, I visited him for the first time in the NICU.

By that evening, the doctors were telling me exactly what was going on with very little sugar coating. My son was dying. They had few options left, they told me. He was on the respirator with as much oxygen they could safely give him without him suffering brain damage or permanent blindness. The options were to try to up his oxygen to very dangerous levels, or to transport him by helicopter to Chapel Hill University Hospital, where they had higher levels of help.

I told them to take him to Chapel Hill.

I hovered nearby as they readied my baby for transport. I couldn’t fly with him, but my father- in-law was on hand to drive me. It took hours to get there, and it was around three in the morning on the fourteenth of December when we did.

I was so out of my mind with worry by the time we arrived, I had my father in law drop me at the first available entrance. I ran the hallways for twenty minutes, looking for ANYONE. I finally found a lady, dozing at her computer. I must have scared her to pieces when I arrived at her desk, gasping for air. I remember being so close to hysterics that I could only whisper, ‘they brought my baby here. do you know where he is?’ Of course, she had no idea what I was talking about, but pointed me towards the emergency room.

I had given birth just twenty four hours earlier.

I finally found him, and found that he had made the trip OK. The doctors explained to me what they had done. He was now on an Oscillator, a respiratory machine that puffed little breaths of oxygen into his lungs rapidly, like a dog panting. His blood would be able to get more oxygen without having to increase the amount of oxygen to dangerous levels this way. They told me this, they said, because it was going to be quite disconcerting to see him laying there and just vibrating, not breathing in-and-out like normal.

It was. His body, his tiny little boy body, just lay there and shook.

That night, my father in law and I slept in a borrowed hospital room on fold out chair/bed things. I had begun pumping my breasts for milk at the hospital where the baby was born, and was relieved to find a whole quiet room set up for pumping mothers near the NICU. I pumped every two hours.

It was after lunch on the fourteenth when my mom arrived from Los Angeles. I hadn’t broken down since I had given birth to my son. I was terrified, but I didn’t feel that I had the luxury of tears. I had been holding it together, being the responsible one, asking the questions and trying my best to take care of myself and my FIL, but the moment I saw her, I collapsed. I held on to her as though my life depended on it; in some ways, it did.

During the next week, my in-laws came and left, my husband came and went, but mostly it was me and my mom, sitting vigil next to this baby boy. The force of our collective will demanded him to get better, although all we could do was sit and watch his monitors. He was on medication to paralyze and sedate him, and we were under strict orders not to stimulate him in any way. He needed to rest, and to grow, not to be distracted by anything.

So we sat there and watched each and every time his blood pressure dropped, or the levels of oxidation of his blood fluctuated. I would hold my breath and pray. Sometimes, my mom would place her hand on the top of his head, and his levels would even out.

At night I had the worst nightmares I had ever had. I dreamed of demons and death and woke up every morning having cut moon shape crescents into the palms of my hands.

Christmas Eve came, and I walked into the NICU as I had for the previous ten days, whispering hello to the nurses and heading for the scrub station. I looked at my baby, only to see that he had been taken off of his respirator. He was laying there, not connected to anything helping him breathe, and I thought he was dead. My knees buckled and I felt the blood drain from my body. Our nurse flew over to me and grabbed me by the arm, telling me no, no, that he was BETTER, that they had wanted to surprise me and knew I would be in first thing in the morning so didn’t want to wake me but that my baby, my baby boy was better and could breathe on his own.

On. His. Own.

It was the best Christmas present of all time.

He still had a long way to go, and when I went home without him, I walked around in a daze. I was a mother with no child, and the emptiness of my womb echoed the emptiness in my soul.

He came home on January fourth. And now? Now:

He’s perfect. He’s the love of my life, the reason I am who I am today, and I hope that when all is said and done, he will know that I love him, and that I fought for him. That I saved him and in return, he has saved me.

*****

I thank Finn for her post, for reminding me that I too have a story to tell.

Thirteen years ago, everything changed. My core, my values, my selfishness, everything was different.

Next to his outfit, to the right, I lay his socks, and his shoes were placed next to the bed, toes outward, so that he could slip them on easily. I didn’t choose his tie for him because he liked to do that himself.

It was important not to be too sweet and gentle when I tried to wake him. That would just annoy him. However, it was very unwise to be forceful or abrupt. So a delicate balance had to be reached. Sometimes I did a good job and didn’t get subjected to a verbal assault. But not often. Verbal was no big deal by this time, though, so I counted myself lucky.

As he left our apartment, I watched from the front window. I hoped that it looked like I was the dutiful wife, waving goodbye to her love, wishing him a good day. In truth, however, I was making sure that he was actually gone for good, and not coming back in. I had made the mistake in the past of assuming that once he left the apartment he was truly gone, see. I went back to bed. This was the height of laziness and unacceptable behavior, and I was duly reprimanded.

Once I had waited for about ten minutes after his car was out of sight, it was safe to crawl back in bed. I lay there, willing my heart to stop pounding and my body to relax. Eventually I did, and slipped back to sleep.

I was seven and a half months pregnant.

I got up, leaking amniotic fluid all over the floor, and scurried to the bathroom. I stuffed rags down my pants, trying to slow the flow, and called my husband. He was ecstatic, and said he would be right home.

*****

I was certain of only two things while I was pregnant. I would breastfeed this baby and I would have a natural labor and childbirth. I convinced my husband to attend Bradley classes with me, although I went alone more often than not. Bradley is a husband-coached, informed approach to childbirth, so being alone was a little… uncomfortable.

Being young and poor, I was on welfare to pay for my prenatal care and childbirth. What this meant is that instead of a doctor to talk to and rely upon, I had Staff. I saw a different doctor every time I went into the clinic, and each one was on some level disdainful and patronizing. The fact that I was a Bradley student was held against me, and my concerns and questions were pooh-pooh’d more than they were discussed.

When I arrived at the hospital, I was introduced to the doctor who would be in charge of my delivery. I had never met her before, but had heard that she was among the more conservative at the clinic. Conservative meant that she was a doctor who would push medication and monitoring, against my wishes.

At thirty-two weeks pregnant, the baby was a full six weeks early. It was never even discussed whether or not we should try to keep the baby in utero.

I was ‘allowed’ to attempt to further my labor along naturally, by walking the halls of the hospital. My husband left to go back to work, and a friend came to help me walk. I was glad that he went, because I was much too worried about my baby and myself to worry about him. After a few hours, the doctor convinced me to get into bed and receive pitocin to help my contractions along.

I labored for eighteen hours on pitocin, with no pain medication.

As I felt my son leave my body, I was left feeling hollow and spent.

They took him just a few feet away to be swaddled, and then settled him in next to me. I couldn’t see him very well because I didn’t have my glasses on. But I saw him blink and it took my breath away. I whispered, ‘look at what I did’, and then the doctor said he had to go. I was so confused, but then I realized he wasn’t crying. At all. He hadn’t made a sound, and the doctor said she was concerned and wanted him to go to the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).

It was so surreal, I couldn’t wrap my mind around what was happening. I had just had a baby, and now he was gone. No one was telling me anything that I could understand. I was exhausted. They told me to sleep, and I asked to see my baby. They brought me this picture instead:

I didn’t understand what was happening, why my baby was sick. He was too early, they said, and his lungs hadn’t matured enough yet. But, I was put on pitocin and induced… didn’t my doctor know it was too early? Well, it was a judgement call, she couldn’t have known that the baby wasn’t ready… excuses and fluff, that’s what I got.

I finally got to see him later that morning, and again, my breath caught in my throat. What I saw wasn’t a sick baby… or rather, wasn’t ONLY a sick baby. I saw my son. I saw how his lips were shaped like mine and how he had my nose. My mind reeled with fear and trepidation, and I knew what it meant to be scared to death.

*****

Part two will be published tomorrow. Sorry, but it’s taken a toll, just getting this first part down. It was difficult to write, and to re-live, and I know that it will be difficult for some to read. When you do, please know that I didn’t write this to hurt anyone. I wrote it for me, because this is how I remember things, and the pain is still fresh. Thirteen years later, I’m still scared to death for the girl I was and her tiny, sick baby.

You want to know the truth? About the differences in children and how a parent behaves from the first child to the third?

It all comes down to bath time.

With my first, I meticulously scrubbed the tub, with COMET, every. single. time. I was about to bathe him. The tub was then rinsed completely, with hot water, so when I put him in, the ceramic would be warm. He then was washed, ever so gently and ever so thoroughly, from head to toe. After he played for as long as he wanted, he was wrapped in a clean, occasionally warm from the dryer towel (yes, I would put a clean towel into the dryer and warm for him. but only sometimes. You know, if it was cold or something), and taken to the couch. There, we would spend a good twenty minutes, while I massaged him and rub baby lotion into his beautiful, glowing skin.

With number two, the comet scrubbing was out the window first. I cleaned the bathtub every week, and that was enough. I no longer warmed the tub every time. I relied more on bubbles in the water than actual scrubbing to clean her, and washed her hair like once a week. The towel was often warm, but only because I had just done laundry. We still went to the couch for the massage and lotion, but not quite twenty minutes worth.

Number three came along twenty months after number two. Which means that he gets placed in the tub, sometimes old bathwater from his sister, sometimes they bathe together, and I splash him. Yeah, for real. I splash him with some water and call it good.

Mother of the Year award, right here, ladies and gents.

*****

And yet, THE CUTENESS!