A Birth Story: Part II

 
Every birth is different, and each baby and mother have different needs. We are grateful to have had Talia in a hospital over other natural methods; it ended up being exactly what we needed.


  PART I


After the epidural happened, they told me to sleep, which I gladly did. Jacob sat nearby and my family came and visited. My mother seemed so proud of me. My father was in awe that I didn't feel any of what the monitor indicated was going on inside. I smiled, slept, and chewed on ice chips for probably four or five hours.  Everyone kept telling me the hardest part was coming up.

Though I felt no pain, I could certainly sense a force coming down through my head, down my spine, and into my pelvis, and I knew exactly when to exert effort. It was crazy; like God himself was lending a hand to push this baby out. Everyone was cheering for me, Jake was squeezing my hand, I felt something rip, and suddenly my tummy collapsed and a baby wailed. 

Memory 5: Jake and I looked at each other with tears rolling down our faces. Jake said something like "That's our baby," and an overwhelming feeling of love, responsibility, awareness and peace seemed to envelop us both. It was a crazy moment of stillness and weight, much like the eye of a storm. Which is pretty accurate, as it turned out.

They placed her on my stomach, but just as soon as I felt her weight, it was taken away.
She had suddenly fallen silent.
My body began to succumb to exhaustion and everything seemed to be happening at a distance. I saw Jake's eyes widen and faintly sensed frantic activity in the room. I heard people running and all of a sudden there were like twenty people there. I felt a faraway tugging of the doctor sewing me up. Someone put an oxygen mask on me again.

Later, it would be written that it was a mucus plug.
My little one, for whatever reason, had stopped breathing. CPR was performed by the specialized respiratory team that had happened to be in the hallway at that very moment. She was whisked away to the NICU, where she would stay for the following five days.

Memory 6: There was a moment when Jake and I were alone in the hospital room again. I was wondering how to tell him that, of the three names we brought, I knew hers was Talia. He was holding my hand when he looked at me and said, "I think we should name her Talia." 

The hardest part was not the fact that I didn't get to hold my baby until she was three days old. It was not the meaningless small talk I had to make with visitors who had come to see the child. It was not that I had to use a machine to deliver milk rather than nurse her myself. It was not the numerous wounds my body was simultaneously trying to heal.
It was the moment when Jake and I had to leave the hospital with empty arms.
Jake put me in in the car, and as he walked around to the driver's seat, I had to concentrate on not flinging the door open and booking it to the NICU to retrieve my daughter. It felt like I was forgetting something of utmost importance.
 Except I wasn't forgetting her. I had to leave her.

Memory 7: It was a Sunday that I first held her. I was shy and nervous but so eager I could hardly sit. She was handed to me, tubes coming out of her blanket, very carefully. She was sleeping.  
My pains disappeared as I listened to her breathe. She was nestled in the blanket and she smelled so good. I could have sat there in the dim light with her monitors beeping quietly in the background for an eternity. When it was Jacob's turn to hold her, it was very difficult handing her over. My heart broke all over again as we walked away when our visit ended.

After what seemed like months (really only five days) of traveling to and from the hospital to see Talia, then staying at the hospital for one night, Talia came home. She was healthy and strong, and much more of a fighter than I.  Our home seemed to be under a greater protection by having her presence there, and though our struggles as parents are far from over, Talia has already brought unimaginable blessings to our family; immediate and extended, present and future.

To say that I love her would not begin to convey the gratitude, desire, protection, anxiety, hope and a million other emotions I feel when I look at Talia. Nobody is "just" a mom. The story of Talia's birth will forever remind me of the feelings that confirmed to me the nature of my infinite role and title: that of a mother.