My Hands…Mother, Daughter, Doula Part 2

Four years later, I happily called my mom from Venice, Italy and announced my engagement to David. We both laughed and cried. Things were finally beginning to be wonderful again, after the previous years of our family falling apart, divorce, cancer. Four months after this happy day, back in New York, David joked with me that my breasts looked bigger. I brushed off his insinuation that I might be pregnant, and his eyes got really big. “You’re pregnant!” He exclaimed. “No, no I’m not, I can’t be.” I said. Well, of course I probably can be, I thought to myself. We ran out and got a pregnancy test. I couldn’t look at it, after the hellishly long five minutes of waiting. David pulled it out of the box I stuck it back into and we stared blankly at the word before us.“Pregnant.”

After our initial disbelief, and finally getting up the courage to tell our parents, we really started thinking about the details. My mom had given birth to 3 of her 4 kids at home, and I was going to do the same. I found a midwife in New York City who was vibrant, eclectic, and had a commanding presence. On our first visit she said she “could tell we had the soul for a home birth”. We were ecstatic, nervous, and gathering strength for an un-medicated home birth. All my prenatal visits were going smoothly, but our midwife did require that we go to the hospital to see her back up doctor for a 20-week ultrasound. We were excited; we were going to find out the sex and get to see an image of our baby!

At our ultrasound appointment, the techs happily told us it was a girl, and we both nearly cried. They kept looking at all her tiny organs, and the tech called in another radiologist and then a doctor. They kept saying words like “chambers” and “valves”. No one told us exactly what was going on. Next thing we know, we are sitting in the pediatric cardiologist’s exam room. We sat on the bed looking at each other, worried, waiting for this cardiologist. He finally arrived and did an ultrasound on my belly. Then he sat down next to us, gently but straightforwardly delivering the news that our baby had Pulmonary Stenosis (a narrowing of the pulmonary valve) and may need a balloon catheterization at birth, or in the worst-case scenario, open heart surgery.

“I know you were planning on a home birth, and I know you have a really great midwife, but I have to tell you now, a home birth isn’t going to happen. Ok? Your baby needs to be here as soon as she is born. You might even think about transferring your care to Columbia University, because they are the only hospital here that performs infant cardiac procedures……..” Too much information followed. My head was spinning. I had read in all my pregnancy books not to plan your birth. Already, at 20 weeks, my plan was shattered. I transferred my care to the high-risk clinic at Columbia, where they no longer have a midwife program and I had to discontinue my care with my midwife. She sadly sent us off with all her hope and great faith in the cardiologists, and the number to a great doula she had just worked with. I called the doula right away, the last shred of my homebirth experience resting with her. The rest of my pregnancy went well, weekly ultrasounds, meeting with cardiologists, obstetricians, fellows, nurses, social workers, surgeons. The trip from Brooklyn to Washington Heights something we could do in our sleep.

We received so much information and so many scenarios for the moments after her birth. Catheter? Surgery? Medication? NICU for a week? 6 weeks? I found myself right back in that place where I was after my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. Blank. Stunned. On the brink of a cave of pain and fear I just couldn’t delve into. The doctors insisted I be induced at 39 weeks. “I know you wanted a homebirth…and a midwife…and a natural delivery…but, “ and there I was, powerless to the hospital, the regulations, and my fear of not giving my daughter the best chance possible, no matter what I had to go through.

I found a skein of soft brown mohair and started crocheting. I made a baby blanket, my fears unraveling into the yarn. But I still felt cold, and stuck in this place where I can’t express myself. Nightly I was on the internet, looking at diagrams of the heart, trying to figure out all the anatomy so I could explain everything to our parents and friends what seemed like a hundred times. The heart is so complex, so beautiful and intricate. Its delicacy bears a great burden for the body. I found myself clenching my teeth thinking of my little girl’s tiny heart, praying for her to be a warrior, to be big and strong and fierce. To know that we love her so much and we will do absolutely anything to give her health and a happy life. David and I often reminded each other through all the confusion and unknown, that all we can control is that we will give it our all—absolutely our everything. Without the possibility of failure, that was something we could commit to.

I made this maroon colored blob, a crocheted anatomical rendition of a heart. This I knew. This I could feel again, and I put all my focus and all my anxiety into my work. I crocheted delicate gold coronary arteries, an aorta, the vena cava, a pulmonary valve, (please baby be strong), pulmonary arteries, (please my little love be a warrior like I know you are). I made three straight arrows on the blanket and stitched the heart on top of them. (Please let us be at our best, our strongest. Our new little family. Let us take on what has been given to us with grace, let us let go of all we wanted and embrace what we’ve got.) I edged the blanket with white, like my mom’s blanket. (Please give us healing, hope, release from this anxiety).

Meissa’s birth came with IV’s, Pitocin, an epidural, and fetal monitors. I kept my baby blanket with me. My incredible doula, Sheila, my soon to be husband, and our proud mamas were with us as I gave birth. Meissa arrived at 6:19 on 6/19 weighing 8 lbs. 9 oz.. My doula swiftly pushed my hand down between my legs to feel her soft wet hair as I pushed her out into the hands of a doctor who immediately turned her over to a man in a surgical mask holding a blanket in his outstretched arms, and she was gone. I saw her 5 ½ hours later, covered in IV’s, a CPAP, bandages, and heart monitors. I cried over her and she grabbed my finger with her mighty grip. I couldn’t even hold her, but I told her how much we love her, we are here, and to be strong.

The next day she received a balloon valvuloplasty and lay recovering in her tiny clear NICU bed, covered by her heart blanket. “The procedure was very successful”, the cardiologist said. “ Good thing she was so big, we really don’t like to do these types of catheterizations until babies are a little bigger, at least 8 lbs.” We got to take our little warrior home 5 days later, all pink and smelling of breast milk.

Having a child has given me so much more insight into womanhood, for now I have been the baby, the daughter, and the mother. I have been through the fear of possibly losing both my mother and my daughter. I thank my mom so much for giving me, among so many gifts, the gift to create with my hands. The deep meditative silence of crochet served as my voice. I am sure that in many ways my blankets saved me, carrying the weight of my pain and fear, weaving seemingly impassable emotions into the comforting and warm fabric I used to bridge my love for my mother and my daughter, without speaking a word.

This is the place I try to come from when listening to my clients. As a postpartum doula, I have to keep reaching back into those fresh mother moments, the unraveling of everything you used to know before this day, this arrival. Looking to my strength in the trials I have gone through, and the tools I found to conquer them, is a place I continue to explore. I never know what will happen with a client, but I know I can give it my all. That I can commit to.