Baby Love (21 page)

I unpacked the rest of my stuff here in the new room: food and robes and slippers and shirts and salves and medicines and baby clothes I thought Tenzin would be wearing by now. I burst into tears, and then I briefly considered going online. Friends and family have been calling and writing, but I don’t have the energy to give them the details. I need to keep my mind clear and focused on being there for the baby.

I am starting to feel closer to the nurses, especially Gemma and Rose, and I’ve struck up a friendship with another mom. I don’t know her name, but her baby was born two months premature the day before Tenzin. This is her fourth child, and she’s already up and back to work. She comes in the evenings to give the baby a bottle, sometimes with her husband. When she arrives, I give her whatever update I can. Like if her little girl was peaceful or ate a lot. And she asks if Tenzin is getting better. Did he gain weight? Have they lowered the oxygen? Then we sit there, not more than five feet between us, staring at our babies and willing them to be okay.

Gemma told me today that she was born in the Philippines and then went to work as a nurse in Dubai, where she met her Surinamese husband. They have two kids, a boy and a girl. The boy had meconium and is now totally fine, with no residual problems. She showed me a picture of him as proof. He’s beautiful. Her little girl is three months old. She said she’s jealous of all my milk (One of the nurses joked that they need a whole fridge just for Mommy Walker!) because she is pumping at work and not getting much, only three or four ounces. I can get out three ounces in three minutes.

We talked about how difficult it is to work full-time and raise two kids. She thought America would be different, but she has to work so much to pay for her mortgage and for the kids’ schools. She said the quality of life was much better in Dubai (!). It is interesting to hear about the American Dream through the prism of her life. So far, I think she’s my favorite nurse. She brings me ice water when I get to the NICU and tells me to get more rest, which I appreciate. Just that little bit of empathy helps so much.

I don’t know what I will do if Tenzin has a heart problem. I am trying not to blame myself, or to feel like I’ve failed somehow. Was it something I ate? Should I have gone to the “better” hospital? I never should have left Dr. Lowen. Glen tells me not to beat myself up, but when I see Tenzin lying there alone, or when I walk into the NICU and hear him screaming his heart out as doctors and nurses walk right by, it’s almost impossible. Even if no one is to blame, still, someone has to show up and take responsibility. Someone has to apologize over and over, and hold him until he knows that, at the very least, it’s not
his
fault.

We’ve been struggling with the breastfeeding. Tenzin has a good latch, but it is clearly difficult for him to breathe and nurse at the same time.

Now when he cries and wants to be fed, the nurses call me on the phone at two a.m., five a.m., eight a.m., eleven. Mommy Walker! Your baby is crying. Will you please come to feed him? I hear Tenzin screaming at the top of his lungs in the background and I leap out of bed, throw on my robe, and run over to give him some milk.

He drinks a little and then chokes, coughs, turns his head away. Between his breathing difficulty and the incredible amount of milk streaming out of my breasts, it might be too much. My breastfeeding book says that too much milk can overwhelm the baby and turn him off the breast completely. I spoke to Janet and she thinks I should stop pumping so often, to slow down the flow.

Now I’m anxious about traumatizing my baby with my breast milk! Glen thinks the bottle is the most manageable solution, but every time he suggests it I feel irrationally defensive. Last night I got really upset. I’ve already lost my postpartum bliss moment, I cried, now you want me to give up nursing, too? I am just so afraid we won’t bond, or that he won’t get what he needs, which is closeness with his mommy.

This afternoon a social worker came in to talk to us. I think she was trying to find out if there were any problems in our family like domestic abuse or drug addiction. She asked some very personal questions about our home life and told us about government programs we could apply for. Glen told me it was normal for the social worker to be available because the hospital is public and serves people who need help. She becomes their liaison.

I am glad of that, but she gave me the creeps. She started to give us a lecture on how different things were going to be with the baby and how we needed to prepare ourselves emotionally. I was like, Are you kidding?

I understand that people need services, but there was something not right about the approach, the assumptions made. Or maybe I just really want to go home with my baby and I am projecting my dissatisfaction onto the social worker.

The truth is, I am obscenely jealous of the mothers who have problem-free births. Their babies just hit the NICU to be cleaned off, weighed, and measured, and then it’s right back up to mom. I caught myself today looking enviously at those babies and feeling sorry for myself and Tenzin.

The cardiac echo came back normal today. Whoopeee! He has been taken off fluids and is now just getting breast milk. He’s finally gaining weight and Dr. Morales says he’s looking good. Still not healing as fast as he should, but the fact that he’s gained a few ounces is encouraging.

I needed the good news. Last night I beat myself up for hours for staying on the antidepressant; for being half in the medical model and half in the midwifery model; for being so consumed with my big ideas that something bad happened to my pure, innocent, faultless baby.

After Dr. Morales told me the good news, I walked the hospital halls drenched in relief. Where else could I go? Last night as I was agonizing over the barely detectable traces of antidepressant found in breast milk, Glen told me that I am too hard on myself. He’s right. Cruising through the different wards, I decided that I’m just like every other mother. I want to do the right thing, but sometimes life doesn’t work out the way I’ve planned.

Passed a quiet New Year’s Eve in the NICU, holding Tenzin and looking into his inquisitive brown eyes. Already, in the brief moments he is actually awake, he studies everything about me. He is getting to know my outer terrain like he knew the inner one. When I walk through the glass door of the NICU, all I have to do is say loudly in his direction that I have arrived. He stops crying immediately and waits patiently for me to wash my hands. Then we do our ritual of getting the pillow right, and my glass of water within reach, and the little stool under my feet. I lift him without pulling his monitor leads off and pop my bra open at the same time, sidle him up to my breast, and then we are off on the magic carpet ride.

Happy New Year, sweet and precious boy. I am so glad you made it.

Does being a mother mean that your heart is cracked open forever?

This morning as I was feeding Tenzin, I noticed the nurses packing baby Christopher up to leave. I was interested because while I have been keeping my eye on Christopher, a delicate, quiet baby with seemingly no complications, I had never seen his mom. I figured that our schedules were just off, but this morning I realized it wasn’t that at all. His mom left him here the day he was born.

The nurses packed all he had—a few diapers, a box of wipes, some bottles, and his little name card—while a foster mother waited in the hallway. I had seen her, the woman who was going to be Christopher’s first love, on my way to the NICU. She was older, and looked tired and overwhelmed. She had a teenager with her, a boy, probably another foster child.

I could hardly stand it. Here I’ve been so worried about Tenzin and all he doesn’t have. When I asked, Rose told me that Christopher’s mother was a drug addict who had given birth here before. A discussion about birth control for drug-addicted women ensued, but I couldn’t join in. I had to will myself to stay in my chair holding my baby, instead of getting on the phone to marshal resources for Christopher. Could we bring him home? Who did I know who wanted a baby? I was sure I could find a nice gay couple that would shower him with love.

But of course, I did nothing. There was nothing for me to do. Baby Christopher was bundled and handed to a complete stranger. I will never know if he ever laid eyes on the woman who made him, but I will always wonder.

 

 

RAINY DAY. I spent it cleaning my new room here at the hospital, finishing shower thank-you notes, and nursing Tenzin. Felt a bit melancholy. Something about the light, and being here in the city. Glen came with bags and bags of food to restock the cooler he set up for me. We sat on the little green sofa, looking out at the rain and eating tangerines.

I took a taxi from the hospital to get my toes painted, because I needed to get out of the hospital and return, just for a moment, to life as I once knew it. I put on my black pregnancy pants, battered denim shirt, and a little lip gloss, and left Glen sound asleep in the hospital bed with his head and feet up. The moment I stepped off the elevator and saw people in their everyday clothes, going about their lives, I started to feel out of sync. The world looked exactly as it did before, but I felt completely different. The dissonance made everything seem surreal. I kept telling myself that I have survived the act of bringing a child into the world and am in the process of surviving the fight to keep him alive. But there weren’t any billboards up for that.

I showed up at the salon with my hospital bracelets, the plastic strips that verify that I actually do have a child in the NICU, around my wrist. Because babies are often abducted from hospitals, nurses in the NICU must match the numbers on my band to the ones on Tenzin’s. If the numbers are not the same, or if I don’t have a band at all, the nurses are required, no matter what I say or how loudly my baby is crying, to restrict my access. I hadn’t paid much attention to them, but outside of the hospital they’re pretty noticeable. Yelena spotted them right away and raised her eyebrows when I walked into the salon. I told her the baby’s fine, just having a bit of trouble breathing.

When I finally got my feet into the hot water, I asked Raya why she didn’t warn me. I had a smile on my face, but I was serious, too. Why didn’t anybody tell me how much it was going to hurt? There were a few nodding heads, and then Raya said, I know, I know. It’s awful. And I said, You know? Where were you, where was everybody, when I was talking all that natural-childbirth shit? Someone should have told me that I was out of my mind and that it was like getting a root canal without anesthetic.

After an hour and a half of being out, I started to miss the baby like crazy. My breasts were leaking through the pads in my bra, and I felt an overwhelming need to get back to the hospital. It lifted me out of the chair and out of the salon and into a taxi and back to the hospital. It didn’t stop until I flashed my wristband at the nurse, walked through the door of the NICU, and saw with my own eyes that my baby was alive. Still breathing through a tube strapped to his face, but alive.

Went out for a walk today with Glen. When we got back to the hospital, the security guards had Tenzin’s name but not mine on their chart. I flashed my hospital I.D. bracelets a few times, and tried to calmly explain the situation, you know, that the baby is sick and I am rooming in, but they refused to let me up.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but Glen says I turned into some kind of Warrior Woman. I remember that when I realized they were serious and not planning to let me up, I felt a sharp surge of energy and also a preternatural calm. Everything got quiet and still. I wasn’t sure how it would go down, but it occurred to me that if these guys didn’t change their minds about letting me upstairs to see my baby, I couldn’t guarantee their safety.

I think I told them that I didn’t care what their chart said, my baby was upstairs and I was going to see him, but I remember that I made a sharp gesture with my hands. I remember that afterward they both stepped back and let us pass. I remember everything being quiet until the elevator door closed in front of us. Then Glen made a joke about me being a superhero. He said as we were walking toward the elevator all he could think was,
I’m with her.

We were still laughing about it hours later, likening it to the Star Wars moment when the Storm Troopers stop Obi-Wan and demand his identification. Obi-Wan waves his hand over their faces and says, “You don’t need to see my identification,” and they magically parrot back to him, “We don’t need your identification,” and let him and Luke pass unmolested.

It’s now official. The Force they’re talking about? It’s the cosmic version of motherhood.

He’s been off oxygen for six hours, with the cannula still in place. Everyone keeps checking on him to see how he’s doing and telling me we’ll be going home soon. Rose told me today that they’ve done all they can do for him here. It’s time for him to go home and live. She keeps saying in that singsongy voice, Mr. Tenzeen, you are going home, Mr. Tenzeen. And then she pinches his cheeks and smiles.

Glen and I spoke to Dr. Thompson, who is authorizing his release tomorrow barring any major sat dips. He stressed that Tenzin was probably going to be one-hundred-percent fine, able to do everything a kid who hadn’t had MAS could do. The difficulty, he said, would be his parents treating him like a sick kid all his life. That’s the tendency, he said. Mothers and fathers, but mostly mothers, fretting over kids who have been sick, telling them they shouldn’t do this and shouldn’t do that, and projecting weak, sick child ideas all over them.

They were speaking in guyese about overprotective mothers, smothers. I was about to get pissed and vehemently deny that I would ever be that way, but then I thought I heard Tenzin’s monitor beeping and ran over to make sure he was okay. Clearly, I’ve got to take baby steps.