The Stories We Tell - Remember to Breathe
This is, “The Stories We Tell,” a weekly series of true accounts in all things motherhood. These 100% vulnerable, raw and ferociously honest tales are from the LA-based storytelling event, Mothers Unleashed. This is Amanda’s story about undergoing a complicated birth in a foreign country and the tangled web of feelings that resulted. Amanda is a wife, mother and screenwriter living in South Korea.
One day, I believe during the hectic time of graduate school, teaching and trying to make sure I allowed time for my husband and two dogs, I wrote the saying, “Remember to Breathe,” on my tiny little magnetic chalkboard. As I look back, I realize I was breathing… steadily and without fear. Oh, there was stress but I never really had to take deep sure breaths. I never had to tuck my head between my legs and just breathe. I never had to pause for air between sobs that just occurred without reason. Almost three years later this saying would become my mantra. I would desperately, achingly need to remember to breathe.
Two years after I scribbled my mantra on that little chalkboard, my husband and I were living in Italy due to him being stationed there. I knew only the basics regarding the language. It was there that I became pregnant.
The first time I needed to breathe was when I went into labor. I had been having contractions for the past week but it was nothing that a nice warm bath couldn’t handle. Finally, after my baby boy decided to stay in his cozy womb ten days past his due date, I was rewarded with being one centimeter dilated at my next check-up. The doctor asked if I wanted to stay at the hospital or head home for a bit. He was optimistic that things would happen quickly, so my husband and I stayed at the hospital. Things did happen (not quickly) in the form of those awful, worst-pain-you’ve-ever-felt contractions. I couldn’t sit down, couldn’t squat, so I stood and gripped my husband’s arms so hard that I left bruises. And I breathed and I counted and I breathed some more.
After about 15 hours of constant contractions, having no drugs (despite the fact that I had demanded them hours before), being only 5 cm dilated and hearing the beep, beep, beep of the fetal heart rate monitor I was attached to for most of my laboring - I was wheeled to the delivery room. I was hooked up to the machine yet again and just as the nurse had done in the previous room, my doctor stood in front of it and watched my baby’s heartbeat. My contractions were coming fast and hard when my husband was swept from the room in order to scrub up in preparation for our baby’s birth. But I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking of whose hand I could grab and squeeze the life out of as my body felt like it was being ripped apart. Breathe, Amanda, breathe.
While my husband was putting on all the necessary gear to be with me, and I was praying for the pain to end, the monitor-staring doctor stated that they needed to do an emergency c-section. What? I don’t remember this part clearly; I don’t remember if she told me directly, I don’t remember if they asked. I believe I remember signing my name. What I do remember is being made to lie flat on my back, the worst position possible for me at the time, and the look of bewilderment and fear on my husband’s face as I was wheeled past him. What was wrong with our baby? I was wheeled into the operating room, clinging to the hand of a nurse who knew I needed someone in that moment and finally received the epidural that I had so desperately wanted hours ago. I asked one of the many doctors in the room if my baby was okay. He didn’t answer. As the anesthesia sank in, the pain was blissfully gone and I could focus on trying to watch the doctors carve into my stomach. I could see nothing though. Not even a reflection. Then the trembling started, and my heart rate accelerated. Was I having a heart attack? I could talk to the nurse who stood by my head watching my monitor. He reassured me it was only the medicine. I had no idea when my baby was pulled from my body. I had no idea he wasn’t breathing upon birth. I had no idea that when the nurse asked me if I heard him crying in the other room, it was because someone had breathed life into him. All I could do as my body shook, my heart raced and I mourned the loss of my baby’s first sound, was try to breathe.
After the birth, I lay on the hospital bed in the middle of the hall waiting to be wheeled to my room to see my son. My husband traveled back and forth between our child and me. He was the one to tell me that things went so incredibly wrong. But as we stood there discussing our limited knowledge of what had happened, everything was made right as a nurse brought me my son, no oxygen mask needed and placed him on my breast. I cried. My husband cried. I could barely hold my baby boy because I was still shaking so bad, but I clutched him with every inch of strength I possessed.
It wasn’t long enough. My husband didn’t even get a turn. The doctors and nurses came and placed him in an incubator, “just for transport,” they said, and whisked him to another hospital that had an NICU. I held my child for maybe thirty minutes and would not do so again for another two days. I recovered in the hospital room, half the time without my husband because he was with our baby. I laid on my back and tried to sleep, and breathe and figure out what went so wrong at the end.
After two days of not seeing my son, and my husband traveling four hours on the road each day dividing his time between us, I asked to be released. I rode the two hours to our son’s hospital in anticipation. This was somewhat dimmed by the daunting realization that I needed to thoroughly scrub my hands and arms, leave all my personal items in a locker so that I didn’t bring germs into the NICU and that the first look I took of my child was of him hooked up to wires, monitors, and IVs. More beeping. More damn beeping. In, out, in, out. This entire experience had been a waiting game. Once again I was finally allowed to hold my baby and for the first time so was my husband. In some ways, I think the days had been even longer for him.
I stayed at that hospital in a dorm room with three other women who had babies in the NICU. We were provided a small bed, a tiny locker and meals that we could take in the cafeteria. I didn’t eat any of those meals. The vending machine coffee and crackers were my sustenance until my husband showed up each evening. I slept when I could because I was awoken every three hours to breastfeed my baby. I slept because I felt like I was drowning. Suffocating. I was remembering to breathe, but I just couldn’t get enough air in. I was surrounded by a language I didn’t understand and those that didn’t understand me. On the final night my son and I were moved into a private room to make sure we were ready to head home the next day. I barely let my husband leave us. I was depressed. I was scared. I watched my child’s monitor constantly, making sure he was breathing.
Just keep breathing.
The first week home was awful. The thought, “what have I done?” ran through my head multiple times. It’s not pretty, it’s not appreciative, it’s not courageous but it is the ugly truth.
My son’s birth was not magical. It was frightening. The separation, the breastfeeding struggle, the newness of motherhood and the sure knowledge that I had no idea what I was doing, weighed me down. It had been only my husband and I for seven years. We were comfortable. Suddenly we had this tiny little human to care for. It took patience, tears, phone calls, family and friends to help us through those first few months. My baby boy (now a toddler) is one of the happiest people I know. He sleeps well, eats well, plays well and is growing like a weed. But his easy personality doesn’t mean the days are easy. I always wanted to be a mother and I thought I would be a natural.
I applaud each and every one of you for undertaking the task of motherhood and surviving. We deal in poop, butt rashes, slobber, snot suckers, tantrums and crying for no reason that we can understand… all day. But I’ll keep reheating my coffee, I’ll keep catching up on work as my son naps and I’ll keep gaining arm strength as my stomach muscles turn to mush. Because at the end of the day, after mischievous smiles, “lovins” on the cheek, tiny little legs running to me to be held, I’ll place a hand on my son’s back and listen to him breathe. And I’ll breathe with him.
In, out, in, out.
Amanda
