body talk

This the nucleus--after the child is born of woman, man is born of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

- from Walt Whitman's Sing the Body Electric


Time has been going by so quickly. I cannot believe it's already been nearly a month since Amalia was born. The physical reminders of the pregnancy and birth, the ones that have to do with my physical connection to her, are slowly disappearing. The bleeding is done, the jiggly organ feeling during any kind of movement as well as the hemorrhoids (try spelling that one) pretty close to gone, my weight is nearly back to pre-pregnancy (though my stomach still bulges out), and I have stopped expressing milk.

The last two or three days of Amalia's life was when my milk really came in because I got to hold her and bond with her. She was born without the gag reflex, so she got fed my milk, which I pumped, through a tube going down into her stomach. In about two weeks I have gone from having to express milk every two hours, an amount that totaled something between sixty and seventy ounces of milk a day (!), to weaning completely. All that time I worried about mastitis, but luckily I was able to avoid it. What will stay are the stretch marks. Amalia was, after all, a big girl. She weighed nearly nine pounds! That's a lot compared to Jonah who weighed less than seven.

Right after Amalia was born, she was whisked to intensive care. Tim went along in the ambulance, but I stayed behind, resting. The midwives said Amalia needed me and tried to hurry me to the hospital, but I couldn't physically jump out and get on the road even if someone drove me. If I tried to get up to just use the bathroom, my heart started beating like crazy, I was short of breath and felt lightheaded. Finally, after about four hours I made it out to the car and to the hospital, still feeling weak and panty. That crazy palpitation feeling when I got up to walk lasted for two or three days, but at last went away. Birth is such a huge process and transition for both the mother and baby.

Tim and I visited the hospital a couple of times together, but most days we took turns, so one of us could always be with Jonah. Between the two of us, we were at the hospital at least ten hours a day.

I hated all the tubes, machines beeping, the cold Amalia had to endure. They had her uncovered, naked save for a diaper, and cooled for the first few days to try to save her brain. She was so cold that her feet were purple. It was so hard to see that and to not be able to hold her. Everything contrary to what a mother (and baby) feels is right.

After the first three days when the brain injury is supposed to peak, she was allowed to be covered and dressed. We could even hold her a few times at that point. She did open her eyes and look at us some of the time. It's hard to tell how much she was aware of with the brain injury she suffered. But we acted as if she was all there, listening to our words and songs, feeling our skin against hers, feeling our love. The body and soul are, after all, two different entities, sometimes in sync and sometimes not.

A part of me wants to forget the hard things about her short life, but that, of course, is impossible, because her whole short life outside my womb was defined by trauma.

When I get up each morning and open the curtains in the living room, I look right at the hill on the other side of town and see the hospital where Amalia spent her short life and died. The hospital is what we see, dominating our view from the main part of the house, from the front door and the porch. I now have that sterile, machine-filled establishment intertwined with who she was and what I remember of our brief relationship. A hospital, of all places, an environment I most detest. One that, other than what it must be like in the middle of a war zone, for me is closest to hell on earth.

Regardless, today I had a good day. The sun was shining and the air was warm and almost summer-like; Jonah and I had great fun together out and about town; I thought about lots of stuff, not just Amalia; and only cried once and for about two minutes listening to traditional Vietnamese music, which reminded me of her for some reason. That, my friends, is a good day. Replenishing, to say the least.