His First 15 Days (1): Birth

A mini-series about my firstborn son’s first 15 days of life in NICUs, and the surreal experience of starting our parenting journey where fear and gratitude collided, and sorrow and solace coexisted.

Greeting the heaviness of a world outside of amniotic fluid.

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I recall you sort of flying out, though I’m sure it was more like an ungracious flail. I was standing on the hospital bed in a half-squat, keeled over a birthing bar that folded up over the bed; gravity was in our favor. Your dad referred to this moment—me birthing you while standing up—as the most primitive thing he’d ever seen. 

We stumbled on a few graphic photos of this several hours later. One of the nurses in the room had been seemingly happy to capture the moment. I won’t paint the complete picture for you but my hair was up in a bun on the top of my head as I embraced that partially squatted stance. Quite frankly, I looked like a sumo wrestler. I mentioned this to your dad when he revealed the photos and his expression percolated with delight:

“I wasn’t going to say it but I thought the same thing!” 

I had just solved his complex riddle of how to tell his wife she looked like a notoriously endomorphic middle-aged man. 

The space in time between delivering you and laying back down on the bed is hazy for me. I only know that it happened. Once I was down you were placed on me. I had requested this as it’s a critical bonding opportunity, especially for mothers planning to nurse like me. Though, being aware that I often break my own heart with unrealistic expectations, I did my best to prepare for not being able to breastfeed. That was sort of what I anticipated being the worst case scenario, or the likeliest worst case. I tried not to allow myself to worry about encountering complications, serious or otherwise. As your grandpa “Grampsy” has always told me:

“Don’t worry, it can only make you suffer twice.”

I had however done a lot of reading about what to expect in that moment from a routine medical standpoint. This seemed endless from my novice perspective; snipping the umbilical cord, chest bonding with baby, whether they would clean you up and take your vitals and compile your Apgar score right away or hand you to me first, and the list went on. I had analyzed all of the research compiled in my favorite pregnancy book and the only one I ended up needing, “Expecting Better” by Emily Oster. I used my notes to decide on my preferences if certain choices were available to me in the moments of labor and prepared to the best of my ability to make game-time decisions as things arose. I chose this over a detailed birth plan, which seems to me like a bit of an oxymoron. I am analytical and I want to have all the available facts to feel empowered, so I did my best to enable this confidence for myself. 

Feeling prepared tapers my neuroticism. 

As you lay there, I wanted you closer to my face. I felt the urge to move you to my chest, where I had anticipated you’d be, but you weren’t mine to take yet. I might have tried to taper any expectations of what that moment might be like for us but I most certainly had an idea based on stories I’d heard, movies, and generally what I had envisioned. But, you and I were still, as was your dad. I cannot say the same for everyone else in the room.

I had read that the presence of neonatal ICU (NICU) staff is a standard precaution when there’s meconium in the amniotic fluid—that means poop in the water. You, my love, had shit the water. My water had broken at home but not completely so they finished breaking it at the hospital. This can quicken labor and intensify contractions. That was the only medical intervention I had during labor… No numbing agent or episiotomy, no epidural, not so much as a fucking Tylenol.  

A man I had never seen before, one of the NICU nurses, was rubbing and patting your motionless little body all over. Looking down at you, I noted your greyish complexion.

Is he supposed to look like that? I thought to myself, unable to speak. I felt lightheaded.

The patting became more aggressive. I found myself remaining as still and silent as you were… waiting for something, anything. 

In what felt like slow motion an oxygen mask approached my face. My eyes gradually traced the hand holding it back up to the face of another nurse. I’m not sure if I had seen her yet. Her lips were moving:

“I’m just putting this on as a precaution. Take a few deep breaths with me,” her head nodding slowly as she audibly inhaled and exhaled.

I didn’t know what to expect of your body movements, you were after all only seconds into greeting the heaviness of a world outside of amniotic fluid. But peering down at your stillness amidst my own lightheadedness, I noted something eerily peaceful… Your silence. 

He’s not crying.

A visceral nausea engulfed me. 

I don’t hear crying.

It became apparent to me that everyone in the room was acting outwardly calm in their rush or their idle anticipation. As the revival attempts on your little ragdoll-like body grew more aggressive, the concern in the room became palpable.

Why isn’t our baby crying? 

He’s not breathing.

I looked up to find your dad’s eyes.  He was standing to our left on the opposite side of the bed as the NICU nurse trying to revive you. Your dad has a true knack for reassurance; he embodies a stone-cold stoic in times of distress. Befittingly, he was a firefighter and EMT back east in another life. His efforts are almost always successful in easing those around him and keeping himself calm enough to think just as clearly as he had before the madness began. I’m sure by now you’ve seen his poker face. But when that NICU nurse swiftly picked you up and took you away from me–away from us–your dad was wearing no such face. 

“I’ve never felt so helpless.” He later told me. “You had gone into shock. He wasn’t breathing. Neither of you had any color. All I could do was stand there thinking I might lose the two things I love most in the world.”

I couldn’t say the words aloud to tell your dad to follow you so I tried to tell him with my eyes. He knew. They only took you about ten feet away from me.  You were almost completely out of my sight but still in the room. 

It was nearly unbeknownst to me but I was also delivering the placenta at that moment. This involved the midwife practically pouncing on my belly to get all the blood out. Then, I was to look forward to having what was left of my lady parts stitched up. None of this received much, if any, of my focus. These things were just sort of happening to me. 

I recalled reading about the significance of the pain from the pressure applied after birth by research guru Emily Oster.  I’m sure that given your status at the time and what my body and mind had just been put through in front of an audience of strangers, anything being done to me at that moment was just something to get on with.

Adam stood close to you but where I could see. At 6’2,” he towered over the mostly female staff and the machinery between us. He was in transition; moving from a center point between you and me while looking back and forth at each of us. He’d occasionally move closer to you to be sure he could see everything occurring in your little makeshift NICU corner. 

Then there you were—cries. 

Your dad paced back and forth between us, not close enough to either of us to let the other out of sight. He called out to me:

“He’s breathing, Moll! He’s breathing!”

Knowing your father better than any other human on earth, I knew that he was trying not to let himself become too excited until your vitals were taken, but the relief was instantaneous, and it only got better.

“He’s kicking! Can you see him kicking?”

The tippy tops of your feet were just barely in my view at the peak of each thrash of your scrawny legs. My oxygen mask was now off. I took what felt like my first actual breath since you came into the world. Under that breath, I whispered:

That’s my baby.

Long before we officially met you and you met the world, you would kick inside of me. Your dad would put a hand on my stomach, gently palpate, and lean his mouth into my belly to say:

“Do your kickies bud, do your kickies.”

We would feel you kick back and as time went on, we’d see you kick back too. 

They brought you over to finally place you on my chest. There was no doubt in my mind that you were there to stay. My baby. Your dad was leaning into us as close as he could get. With all the love he could give mirrored in his eyes, he somewhat whispered:

“You see him do his kickies?”

Thank you kindly for reading!