The on-call OBGYN ran up to my hospital room door, throwing it open, with his lab coat flapping around him and swirling to a halt as he immediately stilled his forward motion and tried to sound more casual as he said, “We need to take you to the OR right now, the baby has gone into distress.” I already knew, I had been watching the monitor and the nurse’s face (who was in the room at the time) when Hannah’s heart rate had started to plummet, sending alarms off at the nursing station (where blessedly, the doctor in question happened to be already standing).
Two days already they had been trying to induce labor, having admitted me for preeclampsia and kidney failure, but I wasn’t dilating enough. That morning, they had told me my kidney numbers were in a range where she absolutely had to be delivered that day one way or another. They had broken my water less than an hour before Hannah went into distress (we had named her from the moment the gender was confirmed via ultrasound), and placed an epidural.
I was told as they hurried my gurney towards the OR how lucky I was that an epidural was already in place, because then they could just switch the meds instead of knocking me out with general anesthesia. As the anesthesiologist was administering said meds, the OB told me I was lucky because since they didn’t have to do general anesthesia, they could give me the “bikini cut.” I know he was just trying to make conversation to distract me and help me stay calm, but I was feeling slightly salty when I told him: “have you seen the rocky mountain range of stretch marks I have going on down there? This body is never seeing a bikini again!” I was packing on excess fluid so fast in the last weeks of my pregnancy, the skin had started to rip and tear in places, with some areas on my abdomen having bulged outward because there were fewer layers of skin intact over them from the rapid stretching.
Perhaps if this doctor were still alive I’d tell him something different…he died of a heart attack just a few years after delivering Hannah. I decided to wear that bikini anyways because how can I expect this beautiful daughter I love so much to take me seriously about ignoring unrealistic beauty standards if I can’t get those voices out of my own head long enough to wear something?
They did some sort of standard poke test prior to cutting the incision that morning and asked if I could feel it. I could. I heard the anesthesiologist call out for someone to come and help hold me as his own hands began firmly pushing down on my shoulders. “She has to come out now, we don’t have time to do anything else” he said. I don’t remember exactly what I said, just something like I understand and just get Hannah out safely.
I know there was some pain, but it’s not what I remember the most…I remember hearing her cry and feeling relief that was far better than any anesthetic.
I have loved Hannah since the very first pregnancy test (I took 3). I was that expectant mother who talked and read to her tummy. She was always very real to me even before her birth, but nothing prepared me for how much that love would deepen when she was placed in my arms for the first time. I love both of my children just as fiercely, though I don’t write often about Hannah out of respect to her current wishes. And I did ask her permission before writing this post.
Always, every second of her sixteen years, I have been so grateful that she and I both made it through that morning she was born. We adopted Tony because it wasn’t safe for me to try and have any more kids biologically I was told, and Hannah very much wanted a sibling. We really didn’t plan to be in the position of parenting a child who has the degree of challenges and disability Tony does. As a mom, I love both of my children equally, but for the past nearly 10 years, while I have done the best I can to be present for both of my children, I know the balance isn’t fair and I couldn’t even begin to make it so, the needs have been extensive enough to prevent any possibility of that. And there is a canyon of grief that was cut slowly through my heart because of it. Yet, every day I watch the love and kindness Hannah shows for her brother and I am just in awe of her. My own sister could tell you, sometimes I was a complete stinker as a sibling when we were growing up.
Hannah has had to sacrifice a lot, and I’m not always able to fix that. The whole reason I began our public therapy program was to try and create the ability for our whole family to get in to do things that were important to her because we weren’t having a whole lot of luck with finding babysitters when Tony was younger. But some environments (such as concerts) there’s never going to be a way to get Tony through them.
When Hannah initially asked permission to go the 5 Seconds of Summer concert, Andy had Mondays off, so he said “absolutely!” Since I developed POTS, he’s been the first choice for taking her to any activity that could run late into the night because it’s physically harder for me to loose the sleep- my body often doesn’t regulate my heart rate nearly as well if I’m getting less than 6 hours. Well, Andy has recently switched jobs…and turns out, he had to work that day.
The moment I found out, I fired off a text, a prayer, and a whole lot of mental finger crossing to my fabulous sister-in-law, Randi. Because some things are more important that loosing sleep and having a little bit of a rougher day afterwards. I owe Randi big time, because she came and sat and played with Tony and Casandra for 5 hours so that I could take Hannah to the concert instead.
To see her happy, to have the privilege of seeing her that happy for so many hours…it was everything. I just can’t even articulate it. Yeah, the therapy goes on and it sure did this week just like every other. But sometimes part of my why and a great deal of what I feel is rarely articulated on this screen. I love you always, Hannah.
