Loving Lily

A million years ago, I gave birth to Lily. She was my first child and I never heard her cry. She lived for a week and took a pass on the rest. I grieved deeply and completely. I didn't want to be half-assed about it. Loving her showed me the underside of my compassion. I never asked why my first child had to die. I asked only for healing.

I recently entered an essay contest about love and although I didn't win, I'd like to share it with you.

Healthy and without strings, love reigned as a constant for me until the day my mother died. At twenty-two, like a junkie, I faced the unseemly reality of sourcing love to get through each day. To compensate for this loss, I made it my practice to love myself with the same fervor as when it came from my mother, but pitiably fell short. This was an early lesson I will never forget. There is no substitute for maternal love. The pangs of missing my mother’s love still attack from behind. However, time has been gracious, gifting me the ability to feel my powerful connection to her beyond the constraints of the living world.

By the time I was ready to become a mother myself, my husband and I kicked off the whole idea of conception with enthusiasm. Within two short months, I was pregnant and spilled my fantastic news like an impulsive volcano. My pregnancy was typical. I could time my bouts of morning sickness to the minute and I anticipated my delivery with a mash-up of elation and terror. As the weeks drew me closer to the date I’d circled on the calendar, I espoused pregnancy clichés favoring long walks, bumpy rides and spicy dishes to hasten delivery.

My due-date came and went without so much as a hiccup, until two days later when my water broke shortly after midnight. I identified this pregnancy detail as an assurance that everything was progressing as it should. At the hospital, there was anticipatory joy on the front-end. But after twelve hours, no contractions and no change, pragmatic worry infused the status quo. My doctor introduced Pitocin to get things moving, and the monitor began to record the baby’s frequent heart rate decelerations. And while my doctor did a fair job of shielding me from his stepped-up concerns, reality forced his hand when the baby’s heart rate failed to recover. This course of events landed me in the operating room down the hall for an emergency forceps delivery.

Before we knew it, it was Father’s Day, just after midnight, and a gorgeous baby girl was pulled from me. But as they shuttled Lily into a corner, concealed behind a wall of doctors and nurses, the mood inside the room downshifted to somber and stayed there. Meanwhile, the forceps had left me with a fourth degree tear that I would feel for months, and as my doctor repaired me I felt the sting of every stitch.

At the time, I was not privy to the sense of urgency that overtook the medical team. Lily’s team of doctors worked with singular focus to get her breathing, taking turns as each tried to establish an airway for our child. We learned after-the-fact that Lily took her first breath almost twenty minutes after she was born. The description of Lily’s precarious condition at birth remains vivid even today, nearly fourteen years later. The doctors described her as “blue and floppy” with “the cord wrapped twice around her neck”. At no time did she spontaneously breathe on her own.

Stable for the moment, Lily was rushed to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (or NICU as we grew accustomed to saying) while Brendan and I were escorted to our new room. As it turned out, the maternity ward bore the weight of exile with new parents on all sides. Healthy bundles of joy were everywhere. We could not have felt more out of place. Nothing was as we thought it would be. We were new parents, alone in a room, with no baby to hold. A few hours after Lily was born, a wheel chair was brought to the room and we were told that we could see her for the first time. I was petrified and reluctant, so conflicted about seeing my daughter.

My husband and I looked the part of Hazmat officials, all suited and scrubbed. Yet despite my physical preparedness, I felt completely lost. I cried at the sight of her inside her incubator and was not allowed to hold her. Lily was lovely. She had beautiful brown hair and weighed 7 pounds and 15 ounces. Her incredible strength was tested almost immediately surviving two surgeries in her first 48 hours.

Once back in our room where we remained for the next five days, I felt utter despair. After nine months of planning, reading, shopping, decorating, and eating – all motivated by the addition of a child – I was an empty vessel and nothing more. I’ll never forget my emotional paralysis in our room when I asked Brendan, “How do we do this? How do we do this if she’s going to die?” As it turned out, my husband’s instincts kicked in before my own. His answer was gentle and straightforward, “She’s our baby. We love her and we're already doing it.”

Lily lived for only seven days. On Wednesday morning (day 5), the NICU doctors conferenced with us about Lily’s condition. Many of the words I heard were bigger than me, attached to medical implications and prognoses. My eyes, more than my words, pressed for clear answers. Lily would not survive. They told us to return on Friday morning. “At that time, we will arrange you in a private room in the NICU. You can be with Lily until she passes.” They planned to separate Lily from her breathing machine, and let her slip away in her own time. Our room was comfortable with chairs for visiting, and beds so we could lie with Lily. The next thirty hours remain the most peaceful and profoundly meaningful memory of my life. Brendan and I held Lily in our arms for thirty continuous hours, loving her in the moment. We were interrupted only by brief and welcome visits from close family members and the occasional nurse or doctor with whom we had made a deep connection.

Looking back, loving Lily was instinctive with an undefined path of its own. I have always been a thinker, someone who rationalizes, weighs sides, and justifies and analyzes feelings. This was different. Loving Lily felt more like jumping from a cliff, trusting that I would bounce at the bottom. I fell hard, and I let her memory wash over me without dissection. Sad music, poetry, long remote walks with my dog, refinishing furniture – these were the things that filled my days for twelve weeks. Yes, I took my whole maternity leave. During that time, I wrestled with my identity a lot. I was desperate to call myself mother, but felt like a phony when I hadn’t even changed a diaper. Lily showed me the depths of my capacities as mother, not my limits. The unwavering capacity for maternal love that was born within me on Lily’s birthday continues to grow, boundless and unchecked, despite what I do, think or believe. For this and for Lily’s brave, sweet face, I am grateful.