I really needed this day to contemplate the past year and how it almost didn’t happen for me, or for Baby A.
But instead, we left the house at 8 am and got back at 4, and then we’ve been preparing for a trip out of town ever since. As the day wore on, I got pissier and pissier, and then I realized- a year ago, I was really fucking sick right now.
Actually, a year ago, I was still asleep, and they were preparing to take my baby to a hospital 40 miles away, where she would be all alone in a plastic box for 2 days, while I was about to come out of my skin in the hospital here, begging, pleading and eventually telling M to break her out of there to get her back to me. I never knew until right then how much an appendage a baby can feel. Something was missing from me, as if my heart were literally across the room and I was stuck on the floor with no legs and no arms and no way to get it back. I truly thought I would die if I had to go ONE MORE MOMENT without seeing her. I have pictures of our first meeting, my hair all askew, hands reaching into the plastic box to touch her before they took her to the NICU. But I don’t remember. I couldn’t remember what she looked like the next time I woke up. I didn’t get to smell her little baby skin or touch her mountains of black hobbit hair for two excruciating days.
H reminded me today about how only she and grandpa stayed to visit me that night-grinning. I think they stayed around till midnight or so, till blood platelet counts came back or something in case dad needed to cough up some of the good stuff for me. I dont know, actually- we’ve never discussed it. Funny how MY brush with death is so hard for everyone else to talk about.
Maybe I need to talk about it. Maybe I need to think about it a little. This baby is a miracle baby, and it’s an even bigger miracle that I am here to watch her grow. For more reasons than just the events of one year ago, as those of you closest to me know all too well.
I need to look at the pictures of the hospital. I need to be morose and melancholy and lose myself in the daydream of what the world would be like without us. I need to remember.
What I wish the very most in all the world, other than for this birth to have happened completely differently, is that I could remember the first time I saw her. And I wish I could have gone with her, and that she hadn’t been alone in that box for her first night out of my womb. I hate that she was ever alone.
And it hurts a little how many people forgot her birthday. I’m not talking about those of you who called us tonight after something sparked your memory. Hell, we forgot too. I guess I’m thinking of family who just- blew it off.