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.