A Birth Story

I’ve just extracted my 3AM feed.  I know I have to tell this story,  this story that brings to full circle a three year journey of blood, sweat and tears. I recall a poem I wrote November 2006:

11/28/2006 10:26:32 PM

Afwagting

Die holte brand waar jy moet woon
Jou tuiste wag in hoop
En jy’s reeds hier

Jou trane glinster in die oggend dou
Jou warmte tussen ons vashou
Jou asem in ons gesels oor jou

Jy’s reeds hier
In die vashou en droom van jou bestaan
Jou heenkoms word afgewag
Ons hoop is jou verwelkoming
Selfs voor jou bestaan

Jy vlinder in die onsekerheid
Van die nuutsheid
En in die wonder of die grootsheid van jou drome
In ons huis sal kan woon en leef
Ons sal vir jou moet wag
En hoop dat die liefde en die hoop
Wat jou na lewe lei jou sal omvou
En jou by ons sal hou

I remember the great hopes and expectations that were shattered month after month as we struggled to conceive. I remember fears of the possibility that we might never be able to conceive.  After 3 years of intensive fertility treatments and many hours of personal investment in my own health I tell the story that completes the circle, our birth story.

The last three weeks of my pregnancy were hell, I discovered new depths to the word discomfort.  I lived through what many consider to be equivalent to the worst torture techniques – the pregnancy rash named PUPPS.  The word still stirs terror when I read it ‘cause I know how bad it can get and it’s not a pretty picture.  PUPPS without a doubt is an initiation rite into new levels of pain and suffering, in fact some describe the cumulative pain of PUPPS to be worse than the pain of natural childbirth.  The itch still lingers a week after my C-section.

Sunday evening of the 28^th of March 2010 will remain etched in memory forever.  After a typical lazy Sunday afternoon of watching Idols, of wishing the hours away, the itch came in full force, like it did the past three weeks, every night without fail.  This time I was driven to tears, the discomfort was severe and unrelenting. This time we decided we’ll try something new (one of more than a dozen home remedies I’ve tried), I undressed, waddled into the bathtub and my husband proceeded to dress me in Bulgarian yogurt.  The cool softness brought relief, for a moment to the raw burning itch.  I rested my yogurt dressed self on a towelled recliner, in desperate exhaustion I took a few deep breaths during this brief window of relief.  As the yogurt dried, the itch returned and I decided it’s time to go shower (another method to find a few moments of relief).  Little did I know that the ultimate and only relief was on its way.

I then covered myself in Sudocrem, like every night before, a ritual that sometimes afforded me enough time to fall asleep for an hour, but this night was different.  I couldn’t fall asleep, the raw burning itch was unbearable and my tummy began aching like it was being stretched beyond capacity. I pushed the sides of my belly together to provide some relief to the bruising sensation just below my belly button.  My first thoughts were that one of the babies were probably turning and that the pain will relent once the baby has found a new comfortable position. It didn’t.  A little later I came down with an upset stomach, visited the loo, and back to bed. I had one or two sore contractions, which I believed to be too far apart to mean anything.  Not much later the vomiting started.  At this point (3AM) we started phoning our moms for advice. My mom told me to go to hospital immediately (I wasn’t quite convinced, but decided to go anyway), so we proceeded, all-a-vomitting to the ER.

Once admitted to the maternity ward I was wired to a dopler and a device measuring uterine contractions. The graph spiked off the charts, I was still in denial, believing that what I had was some kind of stomach bug. Maybe from something I ate? Clearly still completely in denial that this was actually happening.  The nurse seemed notably rattled and proceeded to call my obgyn.  All the while I was fighting for my own consciousness as I heard the nurse saying, “No! Don’t faint on me, Maritza! Don’t faint on me, wake up!” I could feel the darkness closing in on me and could see little sparks like stars in the darkness as my eyes closed involuntarily. The IV brought relief and I regained consciousness.  My obgyn arrived a few moments later, frazzled in bed-hair.  He told me: “It’s time”.  I was shocked, and in utter disbelief signed the consent papers to proceed with the C-section. I opted for general anaesthesia as I wasn’t up to coping with any more drama or being traumatised by any more pain. I was so deeply exhausted and had little to no reserve left to cope with more sensory stimulation so I asked them to turn the switch off and make me go to sleep.

Moments later I woke up in terrible, terrible pain. I huffed and puffed like I was in labour all over again.  The nurse was quietly encouraging me and kept telling me that the pain meds will start working soon.  What I didn’t know when I opted for GA is that I would wake up without any form of sedation or pain relief and would have to fight my way through the first 30 minutes of pain until the pain meds kicked in. It was sore, very, very sore. In all this mess and suffering the theatre nurse kept reassuring me that my babies were doing well and that she prayed for them as they entered the world, I cried and said thank you as I huffed and puffed my way through the pain.  I could hear my husband at the door of the theatre asking for me, but the nurse told him that they are waiting for the pain medication to take effect before I could leave for the maternity ward.  I said some things to people which to this day I still don’t remember, including a phone conversation with my brother.

Hours later I was fully conscious and wheeled into the NICU on my bed and could have a peek at my babies.   Those moments between the maternity ward and the NICU, on my way to meet my babies were the most beautiful moments in my life.  I was relieved, relieved that I brought them into this world alive, relieved that I was alive and deeply relieved that I would experience motherhood.  Those moments were flooded with joyous perfection.  My life was perfect. I was loved and had two children to consummate that love. I looked at Lize first, her body was covered in patches, all wired up with machines beeping, beeping, her face was covered with an oxygen mask, but I could see her profile and I knew. It was in that moment when I moved into myself and the world felt distant, I felt like I was in a bubble where I knew the truth which no one else seemed to see.  The story of Nella Cordelia (a story I incidentaly stumbled upon via twitter a few weeks before) flashed in front of me and I knew. The emotions that welled within me did not seem foreign, I recognised all of them as Nella’s story flashed in front of me. I knew she had Downs syndrome from the first moment I laid eyes on her, even before my paediatrician knew.  My pead only made comments about her condition days later as the swelling disappeared. All the while I kept asking “Are they both normal” and everyone kept answering “They’re both doing very well”.  It felt too silly to ask out right “Does Lize have Downs?”, what if I were wrong?  How embarrassed would I feel?  I refrained from asking and protected my heart by keeping my feelings distant as I saw the inklings of a tsunami roaring on the horizon.  The nights in hospital were long and tiring as I battled through much left over pain and itch from the rash which still didn’t relent.  My mind was busy, trying to figure out what I would do with the news I was dreading to hear.  Three days passed in a haze. I can remember distinctly, holding her, cuddling her, warming her as she laid on my bare chest with her bare body tangled in wires.  That’s when the aching started, when my heart felt like it was being electrocuted, spasms of pain shot through me as I considered the possibility, the possibility which my heart knew before my mind was sure.  Feelings flooded within me, feelings I couldn’t show because I was too afraid I was wrong.  Three days later I came home.  Babies remained in NICU.

Friday morning I woke up late morning when my husband came home from NICU walking into the bedroom, his eyes were red and before he could utter the words I knew what he was going to tell me but was too afraid to hear.  First he told me that he loved me, very much, and as he said those words he burst out in tears, and I knew, and I cried, I cried like I’ve never cried before and we held each other as we cried together and wept.  It was the single greatest moment of loss I’ve ever experienced in my life, I felt utterly helpless and sad and angry. I so desperately wanted it to be fixed, to be gone, to be untrue, but I knew.  It felt like someone I loved died.  From that moment for several weeks it felt like someone stabbed me in the heart, my heart was raw and heavy.  Inside I was a teary mess, on the outside I kept going, for their sake, they needed a mother, they needed me to be strong.  The nurses in the NICU ignored my red swolen eyes, never mentioning Down’s Syndrome, as if to afford me some dignity in a very trying situation, knowing full well that it would send me off into tears.

My birth story, I suppose, is nothing like the typical birth story, seeing that I was unconscious during the birth.  It’s also nothing like the ordinary birth story because it was fraught with difficulty, with challenge, with emotional pain, with loss.  I lost a daughter the day another was born and needed to fall in love anew. Amidst all of this lay a little boy that needed to be celebrated, fully, a normal boy which made me feel so much joy that I refrained from feeling it too much because it felt too wrong to be so sad about one child and so happy about another.  The deeper the happiness for one, the deeper the sadness for the other.  So I waddled emotionally on the tightrope of remaining in control.  The problem with “remaining in control” is that it wells up emotion until it wells up too high and somewhere something gives.

The twins spent 21 days in NICU. 21 Long tiring days of commuting between home and hospital, 3 hourly breast milk expressions and the emotional burden of learning about Lize’s condition all took its toll resulting in what I now believe to have been an ulcer.  Luckily my recovery was swift and the stress gradually wore off relieving my morning stomach cramps.

The hardest thing about learning about Lize’s diagnosis was the conflicting feelings, feelings I dare not admit to others, feelings I am ashamed of having felt.  My world of perfection, my world of “only the best” of “fast” and “achieve” and “intelligence” did not have room to accommodate “slow” and “challenged” and “retardation”.  This tragedy could not be happening to my daughter, to my angel daughter for whom I had the highest hopes and dreams.  I wanted to lift this veil from her face and see who she was supposed to be, who she would’ve been if she wasn’t born with one stray chromosome.  So many scenarios flashed in front of me, of experiences I probably would never be able to share with her, the pain of not being able to bear children or live completely independently.  The pain was intense and numbing and after a while I forced myself to not think about these things because it was burning a hole on both my soul and my stomach.  It was here where I truly started to live one day at a time.

I still hurt, sometimes, when I hold her close and I recognise features of my own face when I was her age, and I wonder, what if.  Swiftly however those thoughts are replaced by pure love and thankfulness, thankfulness that I get to hold her, thankfulness that I get to know her, thankfulness that I get to teach her and guide her and protect her, and thankfulness that she gets to teach me what it means to truly love, without exception, without condition, without expectation. Just to be, and to love.

The complexity of the feelings tied up with Lize and her diagnosis has made it difficult for me to truly come to grips with motherhood, to drink it in and soak it up, but I’m getting there and can’t wait for these two little angel faces to speak and interact and understand when I tell them how much I love them.  For their sake I have to calm my heart and learn to accept the way things are so that we can all grow and learn together.  I enter motherhood with a multitude of questions, of not knowing and having to learn to put my need to know on the back burner and accept that some questions will remain unanswered indefinitely.

Here begins a new journey of not knowing when or why or how, of self acceptance, of other acceptance, of being more forgiving and learning to find perfection in every imperfect moment.  Joy amongst uncertainty. Enter motherhood.

P.S. To all who held my hand to this point in time (you know who you are). Thank you muchly.