Happy 9th Birthday, Jaime Jeanne! The peripheral details in this aren't exactly accurate, as it was written for a creative writing class, but all of the reminiscing about Jaime's birth is very real. A bit is lost here, with the absence of words in bold, etc. that I am too lazy to go back and adjust after pasting this in, but you at least get the idea. So today, nine years after Jaime Jeanne first entered the world, here is her story....
“Where could they be,” I muttered, trying to avoid the rotten planks of wood. The hazy light filtering through the dirty window twenty feet away was not helping me find the box of ornaments any quicker. Stepping over a box of clothes from junior high, I came upon a dusty cardboard box.
Confused, I knelt down beside it, gingerly pulling back the flaps. As I peered inside, my heart constricted and I sank down onto the cluttered floor. Pink baby blankets and impossibly tiny ruffled dresses lay folded inside the worn carton. My breath caught as I removed a faded black and white sheet of glossy paper. An ultrasound photo.
“Megan, I want you to stay lying down while I go talk to someone about this.” The ultrasound technician hurried from the dark room, leaving me on my back with my shirt pulled up and my enlarged belly covered in thick goo. I looked imploringly at Mike, my husband, who stood beside me, still dressed in work clothes.
“Honey, I’m sure nothing is wrong. She just needs to show somebody else before they can tell you it’s okay to go.”
With that, I turn my head toward the miniature screen. A skeletal image of my baby’s face seemed to be looking right at me. After several contractions that morning, I sat with a sense of foreboding, willing my hands to loosen their grip on the sheet, waiting for news.
“Okay, I talked to my supervisor,” the tech said as she hurried in. I began to awkwardly sit up.
“No! Stay lying down, Megan. Due to your placenta’s placement, as well as the fact that your cervix is thinned and effaced, we’re going to need to put you in the hospital. It is looking to us like your body is preparing to have this baby.”
“How is that possible?” Mike asked, just a touch too loudly. “She’s only six months along.”
“I know. We don’t diagnose the reasons for this. In fact, I’ve crossed the line telling you as much as I have. I’ll call your obstetrician, Megan, and see what he wants us to do next. Just stay here and try to relax.”
I look once again at the photograph. December 28, 1998. The start of a two week hospital stay, full of ultrasounds, non stress tests, and anti-labor drugs that took away eyesight and the ability to walk. Shaking off the hazy memories of the time on magnesium, I look back in the box, spotting my hospital bracelets.
“Where are you?” I screamed into the phone as my opposite arm was jabbed with an IV needle.
“I’m on the freeway. Why?” Mike asked, obviously annoyed.
“Because I’m going to have this baby in less than ten minutes. Get here now!” I cried and hung up the phone. The room was slowly filling with doctors: my obstetrician and family doctor, the high-risk pregnancy specialists, the high-risk infant specialists, and the residents on the hospital floor who were merely excited for a new experience.
“Megan, it’s time,” the nurse said as they wheeled me out of my room and down the hallway to the operating room. Everywhere I looked there were faces filled with pity and concern. Mary Anne, my nurse, reached down and took my hand, silently communicating that this would be okay.
Inside the operating room, people moved faster and faster, until they stopped explaining to me what was happening and simply worked. I heard the scratch of Velcro as a nurse secured my arms perpendicular to my chest on the operating table. Heart and lung monitors were attached to my chest, and a brace placed under my chin so that I would not aspirate during unconsciousness. I gasped as a cold splash of iodine covered my abdomen. As they were about to place a mask over my face, I began to sob.
“Please, let Mike come in here. PLEASE,” I begged. They informed me that for liability purposes he could only come in once I had lost consciousness. With that, they instructed me to count backwards, starting from ten. I never reached five.
I wipe my wet cheeks, my mind still back at the hospital. Waking up in recovery with my abdomen on fire from the cesarean section. My family and Mike’s crowded around the bedside while Mike fed me ice chips. In and out of consciousness, asking over and over if we’d had a boy or a girl, not remembering having previously awoken. Finally that night being wheeled down to see my firstborn, a two pound thirteen ounce baby girl.
“Oh my gosh,” I whispered. Somebody had set a Beanie Baby next to her, and she was not noticeably bigger. An IV was inserted into her umbilical cord stub, the only vein large enough for the mere fraction of a CC of nutrients she received per day. Here eyes were covered from the bright lights above her, used to prevent jaundice. A machine beeped continuously as it monitored her oxygen saturation and pulse through sensors on her chest. Every once in a while the beeping would become more shrill and insistent as she ceased to breathe, bringing nurses in to gently pat her, waking her enough that she drew a breath.
I closed my eyes to keep from crying, took a deep breath, and looked back. “Hi, sweetie. I’m your mama.”
I reached my hand out to touch her wrinkled red skin, but pulled back. The doctors had instructed us that preemies hated touch; being held was completely out of the question at this stage. I longed to smooth her matted brown hair, which still hadn’t been washed. Instead, I collapsed into the wheelchair and let the nurse push me back to my room. I sigh and stare at the walls of the attic, blinking hard.
“Megan, where are you,” Mike yelled up to me. “Can you find them?”
“Yeah, I got it. I’ll be there in just a minute.”
Looking back into the box, not quite ready to leave, I spot one more thing: a little pink and white plaid jumper.
“Look at how cute she looks,” Mike exclaimed as we both giggled uncontrollably. There sat our little four pound Jaime Jeanne, in a navy blue hat with bear ears on it and a pink outfit with yellow flowers, completely dwarfed by her preemie car seat. My hand ached from signing form after form. Outside, the weather was unusually warm for a March day. I shook my head. We’d lost so much. First baths, nursing, being together through labor and the first time holding a new baby immediately after. There had been countless tears, sleepless nights, and endless vigils in the neonatal intensive care unit. Progress had been painfully slow, but victories impossibly sweet. And now, we were taking our baby home.
I smile as I begin to place items back in the box. Those next months were such a happy time after so many weeks of tension and stress. We’d go to the grocery store and people asked how many hours old our baby was, fawning over her big brown eyes and miniature body.
I reluctantly fold the flaps back down on the box, stand and stretch my aching back muscles, and look up to see the package I’d been looking for. Picking my steps carefully, I return to the ladder going back down to the rest of the house, just as Mike appears to help me.
“You really should have let me do that, honey. It can’t be good for you,” he admonished as I climb down.
“I’m fine,” I say. In the living room, a flash of movement behind the tree catches my eye. I reach out my arms to grab our tiny two year old. Jaime squeals as I awkwardly swing her around, landing in the chair with her on my knees. She pats my swollen belly with her petite hand, and says in her chipmunk voice, “Baby.”
Pulling her against me, I rock her as I was not able to before, and sing a song of joy to her and her little sister, due any day, who waits in my womb for the right time to enter this world. Laying my head back, I stroke my daughter’s hair and thank God for our perfect little girl, then drift off to sleep with her head to my chest, dreamily inhaling the beautiful scent of her.
Labels: jaime
