Post Pregnancy Examination (Shortened Form)
by Cecilia Kennedy
Infant’s Name: A. Delivery Date: August 1, 20021Moths’ wings hit the window, just when I felt the baby shift and kick. I’d watched The Mothman Prophecies, and all I could see were those powdery white things—everywhere, and I was convinced they were warning me. So at midnight July 31, when the baby kicked, and I felt a slow leak, I cursed those moths and ran to the bathroom, where I discovered clear water gushing every time the baby moved. I woke my husband up. The baby was a month early. I figured there would be complications, so we sped to the hospital, green lights glowing in the dark. Nurses tested me twice with a cotton swab. The second time, it turned black, which they said meant the baby was coming.
Plans for School (Y/N): N2When the cotton swab turned black, I remembered the tiny clothes I packed and wondered if I’d ever slip baby legs and arms into duck-patterned onesies. But I’ve gone the farthest I can with my education. Visiting professorships, suspended from a stick, suddenly fly up out of reach, the minute you jump. The nurses, though—the nurses all around me acted as if the baby would live. And when I said, “But the baby’s early—” they shrugged their shoulders and left. Plans for Work (Y/N): N
Transportation Method: Husband3An oxygen tent in the NICU down the hall, cradled A. the first night. By morning, he was breathing just fine, and I was supposed to start breastfeeding, but after several hours passed, no one brought him to me. The neonatologist who traveled back and forth between the small hospital where we were, and the big children’s hospital thirty minutes away, said that the baby was losing blood, and the doctor didn’t know why. A. would need blood transfusions, and they were waiting on transportation. Did I want to go? I looked over at my husband, who had slept in a chair next to my bed all night—my tall, straight-shouldered everything, now bending under the weight of exhaustion, his eyes clouded over. I couldn’t ask him to drive me. It wasn’t safe.
- Did you have any serious health conditions during your pregnancy? No4What’s it called when you find out you’re pregnant and you cover your face with a scarf as you’re pumping gas because you’re afraid that gas fumes will harm the baby? when you phone the pharmacist to ask if a skin cream that a dermatologist gave you was safe to use, and when he says yes, you call back minutes later to make sure—only to have him yell, “No! It can’t get absorbed into the placenta, unless you eat it!”? Anxiety. I didn’t know I had that until now. It got worse with the pregnancy. But there were good days too: Every morning, I’d tap my stomach, and I’d feel the baby slide around, tumbling inside of me, moving to the place where he felt my finger, and he’d kick back right where I tapped. I’d tap several more times in another spot, and I’d feel him rushing, catching on to the game, tapping back the same number of times—our secret code for good morning, I see you, I love you. We got up to around ten taps, almost fifteen—and in my yearning for his existence, I saw such hope. “This one can count already,” I told myself. “This one will be good at math.”
- Are you getting enough help? Yes5I wish I would have asked for more help, but I’d convinced myself that anyone who wanted to visit would just pity the tiny thing with the tubes sticking out. A glossy photo of the gaping hole inside A.’s stomach seemed such a disappointing option for a first baby picture, but I preferred it to the one a nurse wanted to take with wires through his nose, a needle in the vein of his forehead. The gastroenterologist who took up A.’s case said that sometimes, babies’ stomachs “just explode”—from stress, anxiety, the trauma of birth. Their stomachs repair on their own, without surgery. But I figured most people wouldn’t like that answer. They’d ask, “But what did the mother do to cause this?” Really, I should have accepted the company at least. At first, my husband and I tried to stay at the charity house near the children’s hospital, but you have to be well to stay there. You have to re-stock the shelves with food if you take any, and you have to make your own meals and clean up after yourself. At night, I sobbed loudly through the thin walls, but no one knocked on my door to see if I was okay—and I’m glad they didn’t. I would have told them to go to hell.
- What advice are you getting? Good advice from health professionals6Don’t go up and down stairs / Do go up and down stairs because your baby is dying / Rest and stay in bed / Get out of that bed now, your baby is dying / Let the stitches heal in a clean environment / Use medicated wipes in public restrooms. Before they took A. to the children’s hospital, they told me that he might not live and that my husband and I should drive to that hospital—even though I hadn’t fully healed—even though my husband was exhausted (see Footnote 3 above). If I suddenly developed complications, what next? (Two people are drowning, who do you save first/only one can be saved?) I couldn’t take the risk, so I wanted to stay, but the nurse got angry: “I can’t believe that you, the mother, would not go and take care of her own child. I’m going to leave this room and when I come back, I’d better hear the right answer.” The parish priest we invited showed up too, but he wasn’t the kind, easy-going one we requested. Instead, we got the severe one with the sour-looking face who sneered at my bare arms because I was wearing a sleeveless shirt, and I wanted to say, “So sorry, Father, but my son’s a Leo, born in the heat of August, and we’re on the top floor, and heat rises, and I’m in the middle of hell, and they only sell sleeveless shirts here at the Target.” He saw my tears, and my husband’s, and looked uncomfortable—like he’d never seen sad people before. He turned and left, muttering something about getting the baby baptized. The nurse returned, and I gave in. As she smiled, the neonatologist entered and told me to hold my baby, probably for the last time, because his transportation was here, and well, the hospital was thirty minutes away, and that’s a long time for a baby to try to cling to life. But if I held him, and he died, I couldn’t guarantee my sanity. My husband held him; I left the room.
- Did you use any drugs or drink alcohol during your pregnancy? No7Like I said, I have anxiety (See Footnote 4 above). I craved beer, but I was too afraid to drink any. Too afraid to take acetaminophen, even. In the hospital, the way I was treated, well. . . I learned real quick. I learned what a questionnaire is really for. If asked if you’re too overwhelmed to take care of a baby, say “no,” even though you are. Because, as they ask you these questions, they sneak looks at the doctor, at the other nurses; they write slowly. I figured they’d take the baby from me. So, I dressed up to go to the hospital, though I didn’t feel like putting on makeup. Later, when my obstetrician asked the neonatologist what caused A. to bleed, he said that usually happened to “women who were addicted to crack cocaine.”
- How is breastfeeding going? Great8A breast-feeding specialist, paid with grant dollars, harasses me on the phone daily, telling me that women who can’t breastfeed, “just aren’t trying hard enough.” But my baby is hungry, and I’m not producing any milk, so I’ve resorted to formula, and the baby loves it. When A. was still in the NICU, the breast-feeding specialist would tell all of us frightened mothers (there were others) that we had to breast feed because the babies would be smarter and more resistant to disease. I believe her, but I’m empty, and I’m not going to let my baby starve, so now that I have A. home, I’ve told the specialist that I’ve given up on breast feeding. She tells me she’s “incredibly disappointed.”
- When would you like to receive a home visit from a nurse? Any time9You can come back when he’s eighteen, graduating from high school with valedictorian honors, walking across the stage. (Turns out he will be really good at math.) Also, we’ll have moved by then, out West, where I don’t see moths at my window at night, where there’s just a view of the mountains, pale and powdery white, the only shadow.
Explanations:
1 Moths’ wings hit the window, just when I felt the baby shift and kick. I’d watched The Mothman Prophecies, and all I could see were those powdery white things—everywhere, and I was convinced they were warning me. So at midnight July 31, when the baby kicked, and I felt a slow leak, I cursed those moths and ran to the bathroom, where I discovered clear water gushing every time the baby moved. I woke my husband up. The baby was a month early. I figured there would be complications, so we sped to the hospital, green lights glowing in the dark. Nurses tested me twice with a cotton swab. The second time, it turned black, which they said meant the baby was coming.
2 When the cotton swab turned black, I remembered the tiny clothes I packed and wondered if I’d ever slip baby legs and arms into duck-patterned onesies. But I’ve gone the farthest I can with my education. Visiting professorships, suspended from a stick, suddenly fly up out of reach, the minute you jump. The nurses, though—the nurses all around me acted as if the baby would live. And when I said, “But the baby’s early—” they shrugged their shoulders and left.
3 An oxygen tent in the NICU down the hall, cradled A. the first night. By morning, he was breathing just fine, and I was supposed to start breastfeeding, but after several hours passed, no one brought him to me. The neonatologist who traveled back and forth between the small hospital where we were, and the big children’s hospital thirty minutes away, said that the baby was losing blood, and the doctor didn’t know why. A. would need blood transfusions, and they were waiting on transportation. Did I want to go? I looked over at my husband, who had slept in a chair next to my bed all night—my tall, straight-shouldered everything, now bending under the weight of exhaustion, his eyes clouded over. I couldn’t ask him to drive me. It wasn’t safe.
4 What’s it called when you find out you’re pregnant and you cover your face with a scarf as you’re pumping gas because you’re afraid that gas fumes will harm the baby? when you phone the pharmacist to ask if a skin cream that a dermatologist gave you was safe to use, and when he says yes, you call back minutes later to make sure—only to have him yell, “No! It can’t get absorbed into the placenta, unless you eat it!”? Anxiety. I didn’t know I had that until now. It got worse with the pregnancy. But there were good days too: Every morning, I’d tap my stomach, and I’d feel the baby slide around, tumbling inside of me, moving to the place where he felt my finger, and he’d kick back right where I tapped. I’d tap several more times in another spot, and I’d feel him rushing, catching on to the game, tapping back the same number of times—our secret code for good morning, I see you, I love you. We got up to around ten taps, almost fifteen—and in my yearning for his existence, I saw such hope. “This one can count already,” I told myself. “This one will be good at math.”
5 I wish I would have asked for more help, but I’d convinced myself that anyone who wanted to visit would just pity the tiny thing with the tubes sticking out. A glossy photo of the gaping hole inside A.’s stomach seemed such a disappointing option for a first baby picture, but I preferred it to the one a nurse wanted to take with wires through his nose, a needle in the vein of his forehead. The gastroenterologist who took up A.’s case said that sometimes, babies’ stomachs “just explode”—from stress, anxiety, the trauma of birth. Their stomachs repair on their own, without surgery. But I figured most people wouldn’t like that answer. They’d ask, “But what did the mother do to cause this?” Really, I should have accepted the company at least. At first, my husband and I tried to stay at the charity house near the children’s hospital, but you have to be well to stay there. You have to re-stock the shelves with food if you take any, and you have to make your own meals and clean up after yourself. At night, I sobbed loudly through the thin walls, but no one knocked on my door to see if I was okay—and I’m glad they didn’t. I would have told them to go to hell.
6 Don’t go up and down stairs / Do go up and down stairs because your baby is dying / Rest and stay in bed / Get out of that bed now, your baby is dying / Let the stitches heal in a clean environment / Use medicated wipes in public restrooms.
Before they took A. to the children’s hospital, they told me that he might not live and that my husband and I should drive to that hospital—even though I hadn’t fully healed—even though my husband was exhausted (see Footnote 3 above). If I suddenly developed complications, what next? (Two people are drowning, who do you save first/only one can be saved?) I couldn’t take the risk, so I wanted to stay, but the nurse got angry: “I can’t believe that you, the mother, would not go and take care of her own child. I’m going to leave this room and when I come back, I’d better hear the right answer.”
The parish priest we invited showed up too, but he wasn’t the kind, easy-going one we requested. Instead, we got the severe one with the sour-looking face who sneered at my bare arms because I was wearing a sleeveless shirt, and I wanted to say, “So sorry, Father, but my son’s a Leo, born in the heat of August, and we’re on the top floor, and heat rises, and I’m in the middle of hell, and they only sell sleeveless shirts here at the Target.” He saw my tears, and my husband’s, and looked uncomfortable—like he’d never seen sad people before. He turned and left, muttering something about getting the baby baptized.
The nurse returned, and I gave in. As she smiled, the neonatologist entered and told me to hold my baby, probably for the last time, because his transportation was here, and well, the hospital was thirty minutes away, and that’s a long time for a baby to try to cling to life. But if I held him, and he died, I couldn’t guarantee my sanity.
My husband held him; I left the room.
7 Like I said, I have anxiety (See Footnote 4 above). I craved beer, but I was too afraid to drink any. Too afraid to take acetaminophen, even. In the hospital, the way I was treated, well. . . I learned real quick. I learned what a questionnaire is really for. If asked if you’re too overwhelmed to take care of a baby, say “no,” even though you are. Because, as they ask you these questions, they sneak looks at the doctor, at the other nurses; they write slowly. I figured they’d take the baby from me. So, I dressed up to go to the hospital, though I didn’t feel like putting on makeup. Later, when my obstetrician asked the neonatologist what caused A. to bleed, he said that usually happened to “women who were addicted to crack cocaine.”
8 A breast-feeding specialist, paid with grant dollars, harasses me on the phone daily, telling me that women who can’t breastfeed, “just aren’t trying hard enough.” But my baby is hungry, and I’m not producing any milk, so I’ve resorted to formula, and the baby loves it. When A. was still in the NICU, the breast-feeding specialist would tell all of us frightened mothers (there were others) that we had to breast feed because the babies would be smarter and more resistant to disease. I believe her, but I’m empty, and I’m not going to let my baby starve, so now that I have A. home, I’ve told the specialist that I’ve given up on breast feeding. She tells me she’s “incredibly disappointed.”
9 You can come back when he’s eighteen, graduating from high school with valedictorian honors, walking across the stage. (Turns out he will be really good at math.) Also, we’ll have moved by then, out West, where I don’t see moths at my window at night, where there’s just a view of the mountains, pale and powdery white, the only shadow.
