a mamma in the making

separation anxiety blueprints?

i threw away the blanket they swaddled my baby in. the little hat, too.

this is the post i’ve been postponing.  i’d started it at seava’s fifth week of being in this world, but dropped it, needing more time.  four months have gone by and i can finally write about it, and will to put it behind me once and for all.

yes, it was that traumatic.  perhaps you will understand if you read on.  perhaps you will think me over the top with emotion.  i think yes, that is what happens when you give birth.  you are split wide open, quite literally and figuratively speaking. you are vulnerable, raw, over the top with emotion.  it is difficult to explain, even for a person whose craft is words. i will do my best, though i suspect iwill never quite get it right.

aside from our daughter and the pictures we took of her shortly after came into this world, i preferred no reminders of those two days in the hospital. so i threw away the damn hat and blanket with the blue and pink stripes.

i respect the technology and medical intervention that a hospital affords when one truly needs it and have a few friends who are nurses that i deeply admire, but we were at the hospital because i thought it a safer option than trying to hold out for Sarasota, an additional five hours up the road.  as you might remember, we were evacuating from a category four hurricane.  all of our preparations for a home waterbirth were for naught.  the local hospital had closed. we HAD to leave key west.

“our responses to events are far more significant than the events themselves.” this is the quote i pulled out at random from “Buddhism for Mothers” the morning i first started this post when reflecting upon the second half of Seava’s birth story.   i think i wrote it down because it was a reminder to me that every event is an opportunity for growth, especially the difficult ones.  what happened to Seava, Rob and I in the hospital was not life-threatening, but very damaging to our emotional psyches, establishing a blueprint that took some time to be erased, redrawn.

i still feel that heaviness in my heart when i think back at it.  but i am also grateful for the lesson, for the strength i found in my response.  surely there were guardian angels around us.

Seava entered the world with incredible force.  her birth was precipitious, and her force gave me strength to push her out in one tremendous contraction.  we caught her vernix coated body ourselves, as the doctor was in another room, working with a hallway full of expectant mothers.  the hour after her birth was exactly as you read about:  pure prolactin, our bodies flowing with the high of bigtime baby mojo.

then they took my perfectly healthy baby away.

and i did not see her again for almost five hours.

they sent Rob away, too, to find a hotel at eleven at night.  (they originally said he could stay with me in the room).

i sat in the dark in the hospital bed, my heart pounding, wondering where my new baby had gone, tired, certainly, but adrenaline still coursing through me with such velocity there was no way i could sleep. finally, at almost three a.m., they flicked on the lights and brought me my girl, swaddled tightly and laying in her isolette.  I unwrapped her, wanting to feel her skin next to mine, put her tiny mouth to my breast and watched this strange little being i’d waited so long to meet so that she could eat. gazing at her wristband i saw the letters E S M.  For a brief moment, i swore the bracelet read Esmerelda and wanted to vomit.  Whose baby am i feeding?  I pulled her from my breast, stared at her little scrunched up face, studying it to see if she resembled the being i’d met for only an hour hours before.  I could not truly recognize her, so i read the wristband again.  d ESM arais.  my last name.  of course. how foolish of me.

and so it began, that long night in the recovery room with my babe.  the nurses coming in every few hours, without knocking and flicking the lights on unexpectedly, taking her from my arms (once during the middle of feeding) for tests but not telling me what tests.  not telling me who they were.  just coming in like tired robots and taking my new baby away from me. leaving the door open behind them when the left, so that i could hear all the hospital machinery blipping and bleeping through the night, until i decided i’d had enough and would get out of the bed to close it myself.  nothing like the “rooming in” i’d envisioned for our new family, among the comforts of our own home and the care from people who loved us.

the next morning Rob, my mother and our midwife Sarah came.  I’m not sure why, but i was under the assumption that, after 24 hours, we could leave.  Sarah confirmed this.  But the facts were this:  the hospital wanted us there for 48 hours.  or rather, I could leave, but for liability reasons (aka MONEY, and im certain the second day of insurance billing, equalling MORE MONEY) the baby had to stay.

“sign her out with an AMA form,” said Sarah.

“what’s an AMA form?” i asked.

against medical advice.

rob and i hired Sarah to be our medical support, we trusted what she was saying.  she knew all the procedures they were going to do on the baby,  why couldn’t we leave if she could do them herself?  we had a perfectly healthy baby, and aside from my swollen hoo ha, i was without complications, too.  i wanted to leave god dammit, and who were they to tell me what i could and couldn’t do.  my support group left to get some lunch while i rallied up the administrators, telling them i wanted to check my baby and i out come 24 hours and to summmon up an AMA form for me.

in less than two hours, i had a storm of people filing in and out of my room.  the first, a kind nurse, offering me a sort of “deal.”   if she let rob stay the night with me, would we stay?  thank you, but no, we really want to leave.  next, a woman i can only remember as the handwringer, the head administrator, came in and lectured me about the risks involved, never once establishing eye contact.  she said that a case of medical neglect with the department of families and children would be started, and that i could get arrested.

bullshit, whispered sarah.

here i’d only been a mother for less than 24 hours and i was at declared neglectful and at risk for going to jail?  i was scared.  tired.  and wanting out of there more than ever.  i felt assaulted. fight or flight, i wanted to fly.  though i could suddenly understand perfectly how wild animals would kill to protect their young, i myself was too tired to fight.  i stood in the hallway with each consecutive person that called me out of the room (away from my support) to lecture me while i stood on the cold tiled floor in my bare feet with my crotch blown open and pulsing, all the energy poured out of me.  my mind was racing.  what should i do?  i never meant to have this many people gang up on me, especially only hours after one of the most phsyically momentous and beautiful occasions of my life.  i wanted flowers, love, words of congratulations.  a neckrub, a kiss.  smiles from the staff, as if saying, good job, you did it! instead i stood shivering in the hallway while guards and administrators lectured me on how terrible of a person i was.

“if you didn’t want a hospital birth, why are you here?” shouted the hand wringer.  all five of the employees had gathered to confront me.

i thought it was safer than giving birth on the side of the highway?  a category four storm was compromising our island, we had to leave?  what part of the story were they not listening to?  where was their compassion? and in this last question, i knew i had to find my own.  for myself, for them, for everyone involved.  yes, i wanted this to be all about me and my new family, but here we were, in a hospital, with a staff of people whose lives were crossing over into mine. in the midst of all of my fear, i found some guidance and went deep into the wisdom place within, heard the voice that helped me speak it out loud:

“look, i know you all just want to go home to your families and friends, that you are doing your job to the best of your ability and that it is probably unusual for someone like me to come along and rock the boat asking for something different than what you are used to giving.  i understand, i used to work in administration too.  i know the rules and the consequences of breaking away from those rules. but if you could put yourself in my shoes for a moment.  forget the rules and see me as a human being who just gave birth to her first child, hoping for a homebirth but having to evacuate from a hurricane and wanting now to be with her family in a quiet, loving setting, maybe you will see that im not some terrible person who wants to compromise the health of my child or your jobs.”

something like that….

and i saw them all soften.  i saw not a uniformed security guard but a young hispanic man, his face like a teddy bear,the handwringer a small tired woman maxed out and tired herself,  all of them nodding, yes, they wanted to go home, be done with the job, live their lives.  i was an impediment to this, with my requests of a form they could not seem to find, and a pediatrician whose rage was flying high because i dared shake the system he’d so carefully put together.

and then i began to plea bargain.  i would like to take you up on your first offer to let rob stay, and we will stay if you can honor a few things.  knock on the door when you enter, tell us who you are, why you are there.  don’t flick the lights on suddenly.  if you take our baby for a test, please tell us what test and bring her back as soon as possible.  i know it’s convenient for you to line up all the babies and do the tests at once, but why take her for four hours if you only need her for five mintues?

they agreed.  in hindsight, what felt like somewhat special treatment i realize now is just common courtesy that should happen in all maternity wards.  the following hours went relatively quickly, with their staff accomadating my requests, with rob cozied up with me and the baby in the single hospital bed, trying our best to pretend we were tucking in to our bed at home, getting to know our new little one, whose name is Seava, meaning acts of selfless compassion.

Little did we realize before she came, how perfectly the name would suit her.  Seems she helped us all learn better how to do our jobs that day.