The Afterbirth

After the nurse staff showed me my daughter, I passed out and woke up in a dimly lit hospital room alone, except for a nurse whose profile glowed with iridescence from the outdated bulky computer screen to which she was glued. I tried to gain her attention, as I felt I was of more importance than keeping up with charts or Facebook or whatever she may have been attending to. Her chair swiveled to meet me, and it's occupant met me with blank eyes. The zombie nurse mechanically removed her wiry fingers from the keyboard and placed them in her lap and rose to greet me, or so I thought.

Without saying a word, she lifted my gown and took her cold, bloodless fingers and pressed against the stiching that held my guts inside. The drugs had worn off and I felt pain once again. Terrified by this wench, I swung with my right, then my left, punching her in the face, twice.

Everyone has heard pregnancy horror stories, and that is not what I want to completely convey.

My daughter was taken to the Intensive Care Nursery as I was introduced to a breast pump, a  deceitfully titled mechanism used to extract breast milk. The movie "Austin Powers" made pumps for body parts seem novel and exciting, however this was neither of those things.

My daughter was not ill, but because of the possible complications of my type 1 diabetes, she was monitored for blood sugar levels and overall stability for two days.

In order to meet her for the first time (while not heavily sedated) I had to mount a wheelchair while remaining attached to a small number of IVs hooked to my arms, the oxygen meter on my finger, and somehow accommodate my laptop computer comfortable set in my lap against my serrated body. Her father sat calmly, watching my every move from his Skype window.

Out of my hospital room it was a right; a long hallway, then a left; another long hallway, a right and another right to get to the elevator. I punched the button much like I had punched the nurse, frustrated and confused. Still wondering if this entire scenario was a strange nightmare of some sort, I got into the elevator alone with my arsenal of supplies.

When I got to the Intensive Care Nursery, the internet on my computer died and I lost contact with her father. It was better off. Babies in Intensive Care Nurseries are indeed intense. He probably couldn't have handled it. These newborns were kept in clear heated boxes which made me feel like I was looking through a microscope, and their fragility, innocence, and strength were all being magnified through the clear looking glass. My child, nameless, new, and novel was in a heated clear box as well.

In the brief seconds after my daughter was born, I had asked my doctors,"Are you sure she's mine?" She was nothing like I expected. However, in the nursery I recognized her immediately. She was bigger than her premie baby-neighbors and had a lot of black hair. Still, I checked with the nurses to make sure the baby was indeed mine. After all, nobody wants to steal mother's baby. Those bitches are crazy.

Wheeling my broken self through the maternity ward where all of the happy parents were giggling and cooing over their new bundles of joy made me quite enraged. Thinking of the raising divorce rates, I cynically congratulated them on their new lives together.

My daughter was novel to me. I was still unsure of how to feel about her. It was now confirmed. None of this experience was a nightmare at all. This was the thing that was growing in my stomach for the past 37 weeks. She was the reason I questioned my values and changed my life. She was the reason I attended an unreasonable amount of doctors appointments weekly since I arrived in the US. I made her. I made a life. That, in itself was an amazing thing.

The giggling parents started to anger me less as I realized that I was only jealous of the relationships they were harboring. I started to use the breast pump less and actually breast fed my baby. I did not feel any maternal connection while doing this, my life did not become complete as some mothers had explained to me. It was simply something I needed to do, like breathing.

But breathing started to become difficult. I felt my lungs shrinking as I hobbled in my wheel chair to and from the IC Nursery. A doctor passed me in the hallway and asked how I was feeling. I said I felt great, I was breast feeding, after all, and she billed that to the insurance company as a consult.

Apparently I had lost gallons of extra blood during the c-section. The blood loss caused my hemoglobin (oxygen levels) to be less than half of what they should have been, but I persisted and spent more and more time with my daughter. On the second night after her delivery, it was decided that I needed a blood transfusion in order to get my hemoglobin up. A blood transfusion does not seem like a big deal, unless you are receiving one. The nurse snuck into my room in the middle of the night with bags of blood from an undisclosed donator, and shot it into my veins.

I felt better, but not much. In the morning, I couldn't breathe and almost died pushing the nurse call button. I almost died. Someone unable to help finally came, and she notified a team of specialists who put me on an oxygen tank and rushed me to an x-ray. I had fluid filling my lungs now. They inserted a long needle between my ribs and pulled out liters of greenish fluid.
Mellow Yellow
-Ish.

My daughter was discharged from the Intensive Care Nursery and she joined me in the Intensive Care Unit for adults. The irony here is apparent. Happy new-mother feelings ebbed and flowed in accordance to my health. I felt a maternal euphoria that was quickly smashed by my inability to breathe or move due to the number of medical devices to which I was attached. Identifying emotions was difficult.

I named my child after about a week of personal debate. I wrote her name on a piece of paper, and sent it to reception. She then became Marla Alejandra. That was it. I just wrote it down with a blue bic pen and she became a little, but very real person.

After three more days in intensive care, I was able to walk without fainting and was discharged from the hospital. My parents (who had been with me throughout most of this process) helped me gather my personal belongings and the baby stuff and the baby. We put her in the car seat and I was afraid she was going to choke. I was afraid of trees, I was afraid of other cars on the road, I was afraid of everything, but for the first time these fears were not for me, they were for my daughter.

I think I began loving her then.

Marla Alejandra and a very tired new mother were on their way home, finally.