He does, but then a minute later I feel the pulling sensation as the baby is delivered, and we are both quiet, listening for news, waiting for the outcome.
There is no sound for a while. No baby’s cry. Then someone calls out, “We need to get a pediatrician here, right away!”
My heart falls. My upper body begins to shake more violently.
The next hour or so is a blur: “Your baby has an extra finger.” “She’s pink.”
“You mean it’s a girl?” I ask, seeing a future with a daughter.
“Oh, I don’t know why I said ‘she.’ It just came out. I didn’t look to see what gender it is.”
I’m hearing someone say “he.” Dicken telling me it’s a boy. Me telling Dicken to go over and find out what’s happening. “Does he look normal? Is he Down’s?”
“He’s really small.”
Mom appears in a blue surgical cap and coverall. Lots of activity. Faces look serious. No one congratulating me, no one telling me what’s happening. Being wheeled into the recovery room. As I leave the operating room, I don’t want to look but I do. There’s my baby, on the table with an oxygen mask over his face and lots of people leaning over him. The sight of him washes over me, a tug of tenderness, a relaxing, Oh, he’s adorable. A yearning to hold him, to get this awful period of separation over.
In the recovery room with Mom, I have no concern for my own physical well-being. I hardly notice the nurse taking my vitals, checking my monitors. The fact that I’ve just undergone the first major surgery of my life couldn’t matter less. My attention is on the state of the baby, the vast gulf between me and him, and my not knowing what is going on. I am shaking again, my teeth chattering as if I’m freezing cold, but I don’t feel a thing physically.
Dicken comes in, his face serious. “Some of his intestines are in his umbilical cord. And he has a cleft palate.”
I imagine a deformed baby. Suddenly I don’t want him anymore. I tell myself I don’t have it in me to mother a less-than-perfect baby. I’d rather have him die. I wish with all my heart I could go back to April and undo the pregnancy. I kick myself for taking this path. It feels like a complete nightmare. One I can’t cope with. One that will ruin my life, Dicken’s life. Why can’t I ever be happy with what I have? I feel like the dog that goes for the extra bone in the water’s reflection and loses the only one he has.
“Can they fix his problems?” I ask.
“Yes, they can do surgery for the palate and the intestines. They’re talking about transferring him to Rogue Valley—there’s a neonatal unit there.”
I think of the magazine ad Dicken showed me earlier today, with the boy and his deformed mouth. My baby will have the surgery, he’ll be fixed. Then I imagine the parents of children who don’t have the security I do, and I feel overwhelmed with sorrow so intense I’m not sure I can withstand it. It is grief for mothers everywhere, and grief for me and my own child, for what is happening in this hospital right now.
Dicken leaves again. My mother is trying to reassure me. I hardly hear her. I’m drowning in thoughts of surgery, separation, drugs pumping into my baby’s pristine body, tender newborn skin scarred by scalpels, untold psychological trauma. I wonder if he’ll ever be able to breastfeed.
My mother leaves and comes back. She mentions something about the baby’s skull, possible brain damage. I feel another layer of reality drop away. I’m spinning in a terrifying vortex.
Dicken returns and tells us of a plan to helicopter the baby to Portland for surgery.
“Can you go with him?” I ask.
“I think so. Yes, of course I will.”
He leaves again.
I feel desperate and helpless. I ask my mother, “What’s going to happen next?”
“We don’t know. We’re in the mysterium tremendum.”
I’m wheeled into the hospital room. I see the three midwives’ faces, their massive concern. Karen puts her hands together in a prayerful gesture and bows at my feet. Rhione says, “Cinda, I honor you.” Everything feels so fast, I can’t catch my breath. I’m still shaking.
I see Maud’s face near me.
“The baby has a lot of problems,” I tell her. I’m ashamed: I want to tell people about my perfect baby, not this terrible mess I’ve created.
Maud looks worried, tells me she knows. She goes into the hall at some point.
*
I won’t remember the next period of time. Only the moment Dicken and Maud come into the room, their faces grim, eyes downcast. I know the news is horrendous. I am afraid of what Dicken will say, and I’m distressed for him, knowing he doesn’t want to have to tell me.
He kneels down by me. “Did he die?” I ask. He shakes his head. I envision the worst kind of handicap, a long life of disfiguration, surgeries, drugs, mental retardation, adult foster care, and on and on. I see an endless tunnel, an existence dark and meaningless and against everything we believe in. I see ruin. Human ruin, family ruin.
“The baby has some serious challenges,” he begins. He tells me the team suspects trisomy 13. I flash back to a piece I read on the Internet about trisomy 13, the list of problems, how I skipped over it without resting on the possibility because it was too dreadful. “These babies don’t live long,” Dicken says, breaking into choked sobs. I reach for him, reassuring him with my hands as best I can given my limited strength and mobility.
“We have a decision to make,” Dicken says, when he can speak again. He manages to tell me about the option of sending the baby to Portland for testing, then possible surgery; the poor odds. “They may not be able to stabilize him—they can’t get a breathing tube in his mouth because of the cleft palate. If he does have trisomy 13, which they will do a blood test for, they won’t operate because the chances of survival are so slim.”
I know right away we are not going to put our baby through all that.
“We have to let him go,” I hear myself say. Dicken nods, begins to sob again. I reach for him, and everything in me wants him to know there is nothing wrong. We are facing a terrible loss, but at the same time I am filled with a strange certainty that all is unfolding in some sort of natural perfection. Compared to the terror my mind has been putting me through, this eventuality is so simple, so clear. To me, that clarity is a gift, even though what we are dealing with is the most difficult news I’ve ever had to confront.
Something in me relaxes—the part of me that was clenched in the face of the unknown. Now that there is a definite outcome, an end in sight, I am flooded with relief. I hope that it happens quickly, that we get to the end once and for all. “How long will he last?” I ask.
“They don’t know. Could be minutes, could be days.”
When I see that Dicken has regained his composure, my relief vanishes, and I go cold with fear. It’s as if we are switching places, one gathering strength as the other wavers.
“I don’t want to see the baby,” I tell Dicken. I am scared of what he will look like and how that will affect me. I don’t believe I can love him. I want this loving husband and father to carry his son through life and death. Dicken is strong, he can do it. It’s better if I never see him.
“Take him and hold him until he dies,” I tell Dicken. I am worried that I’ll reject him. I don’t yet know the difference between a cleft palate and a cleft lip and imagine a deformed, grotesque-looking baby. I’m afraid that if I do see him and feel a connection, letting him die will be beyond my ability to endure. I just want the whole thing to go away. I think that if I don’t see him, I can forget the pregnancy and birth and go on as if none of it ever happened.
Dicken looks at me with a serious face. I tell myself that he will do whatever I ask, that he will stick to his birth philosophy of always honoring the mother’s requests, without question. “Honey,” he says very gently but firmly. When I see that he isn’t just going to turn around and do what I’ve asked, I steel myself to make him comply. “You’re his mother. He knows you. He needs you now. I think you should hold him.”<
br />
In that instant I know he is right, and I nod.
Dicken goes to see the doctors. I am overwhelmed and agitated. This has brought an end to the terror, but the sudden change in direction is making the world spin.
Mom comes in, still in her scrubs. She’s been with the baby ever since I was wheeled out of recovery. When I was eight months along, I dreamed I had a beautiful baby boy, and just after the birth he looked up at Mom and said, That my Nana, again? It makes me think now that he knew her, and I imagine he recognized her when she came to him during the hour after he was born, when she was the only family member with him. Knowing that she has been with him, touching him, talking to him, welcoming him, giving him her unconditional love, is a great solace. I’ll always be grateful to her for following her instinct to get to the hospital right away, talking her way into the operating room, and managing to get herself on the resuscitation team for that period of time just before they diagnosed him.
“He’s so adorable!” Mom tells me. “And he’s a real fighter. He keeps trying to pull off the oxygen mask. He looks just like Jabu. Oh, his chest, it’s so beautiful!”
This message and my mother’s softness and love melt me, and I feel a tiny surge of confidence. I can love this baby. Hope stirs in me. Then heartrending dread. A bittersweet burst of emotion. He’s cute, what a relief. But oh, what a waste.
*
A hush comes over the room as a nurse brings my newborn son to me. I reach out for him. The nurse places him in the crook of my left arm. I look at him, and time stops.
There is no fear, no horror, no sense that anything is wrong. I am in a state of complete bliss, marveling at the wonder of this being. Thoughts stop. I’m no longer shaking. I look into his eyes, and he sees me and gives me a look of recognition, almost a smile. He is swaddled in a white blanket and wearing a soft white cap on his head. My beautiful, beautiful son, my baby, my love. His mouth is perfect-looking, everything is, and he has stunning dark blue eyes. A little like Jasper, a little like Dicken. I would never guess from seeing his face that he has any physical problems. Yet in the instant I meet him I know I’d love him even if his face were deformed.
I’m amazed at him. My sister will tell me later that I speak to him with loving words, reminding her of how I spoke to Jasper when he was first placed in my arms.
“The doctor says you can try to nurse him.”
I position his face next to my nipple. He tries to mouth it, makes a distressed face and a small cry like a wounded baby bird. He seems to be struggling for breath. I feel desperate to help him in that moment, a searing stab of anguish I can’t contain. Then he turns his head away from my nipple and puts his tiny fist in his mouth instead. He seems to have soothed himself. He doesn’t show another sign of pain or distress for the rest of his life.
“We need to name him quickly, don’t you think?” I say to Dicken.
He nods.
“Theodore,” I say, the name coming out of my mouth without thought.
Dicken nods. “That’s his name.”
“Theodore Simon,” I say.
“Yes. Theodore Simon.”
Theodore came up during the pregnancy but was never high on the list. I know it means “gift from God.” Simon is Dicken’s father’s name, and Jasper’s middle name. Jasper has asked us if he and the baby can share middle names.
My stepfather Ralph arrives with Jasper and Kevin. Ralph hangs in the background, but the boys come over quickly, looking at their brother with wide eyes.
“Do you know he’s not well?” I ask Jasper. He nods gravely.
As Jasper stands near us, the baby stretches his arm out, as if he’s reaching for his brother. Jasper moves closer and strokes Theo’s hand. His eyes grow wide as he discovers the extra finger, a tiny appendage next to his pinky. At first he seems a little taken aback, and I wonder if he’s frightened.
“Look, Mom! He has six fingers.” He touches the baby’s hand with a look of awe and says, “It’s his lucky finger!”
Jasper and Kevin kiss the baby, stroke his face gently.
Then Theo closes his eyes and stops breathing for what seems like a long time. He begins to turn pale.
“I think this is it,” I tell Dicken.
Dicken comes over and touches Theo, beginning to sob.
“It’s okay to let go,” I tell the baby. “We’ll always love you.”
Theo suddenly takes a big breath and opens his eyes again.
*
Gabriella arrives, camera equipment in hand. We had asked her to film the home birth, so she had her gear ready to go. I introduce her to the baby and ask her to be his godmother. She smiles, tears falling down her face. A few minutes later, Tom, Grace, and Sam arrive. I’m happy Theo has made it long enough to meet his cousins. Tom hands Sam to Dicken, who holds him up to the bed so he can see the baby. Sam kisses me. Grace smiles at Theo, gently touches his face.
I ask Dicken if he wants to hold Theo, and he nods, then takes him from me, cradling him carefully in his large hands. They gaze at each other with a sense of awe and ease, like old friends meeting after a long, long time. It reminds me of watching Dicken hold Jasper for the first time, only Theo seems more awake than Jasper was. I ask Gabriella to film it. She gets out her camera.
When the baby comes back to me, I look at him and wonder how long he will be with us. I will stay awake as many hours and days as he’s here. I have no sense of physical limitations, no tiredness. I don’t know what time it is, whether it’s day or night, winter or summer, whether we are on earth or on the moon. Nothing matters but loving this baby.
I know that all I have to do is love him and let him go. That is crystal clear. Everything else falls away. Loving like this is the purest, most powerful experience I’ve ever had. Overwhelmingly beautiful. I have to love him but I can’t hold onto him. I can’t cling, can’t go into stories about what I would do if I ever lost him—I’ve already lost him. I can see the inevitable and relax into cherishing him while he is here. The intensity of this birth and death brings me into a presence I have never known. No fear, no doubt, no suffering. Maybe part of me is going through some of that, but my attention is elsewhere, on the pure love blasting through everything. The light is so bright that my personality, my physical self, and the drama of what is happening won’t show up on Gabriella’s film.
Theo closes his eyes, makes a fist, and stops breathing. I watch him get pale. I focus myself on him fully, telling him I love him and that it’s okay for him to go. I don’t grasp, don’t want it any other way. I am so caught up in the unfoldment, I am almost willing it to happen. I hear Dicken say, “Godspeed on your journey,” as he gently touches Theo’s forehead. The baby is quiet, doesn’t take another breath. A nurse comes in and listens to his heart with her small stethoscope. She says she can hear a heartbeat but it is faint. “I don’t think it will be long now.” A few minutes later she listens again and nods. “He’s gone.” She looks at her watch to note the time—5:14 a.m., almost five hours after his birth.
Dicken sobs. Grace wails. The room fills with raw expressions of grief. I hold onto Dicken, trying to comfort him with my limited physical mobility, trying not to tangle the tubes in my arm. His cries go straight through me: they are almost unbearable. At the same time, I am overcome with a feeling of peace. I hold Theo, touch his face, continue to bask in love for him.
*
I wait for the nurse to tell us what they will do with his body, expecting that soon we’ll have to turn it over for whatever they need to do. Someone, maybe me, maybe Dicken, asks the nurse about the protocol. I steel myself to have to say goodbye and hand him over. I know I won’t resist. There is nothing hard in me. I am completely soft, pounded into full surrender.
The nurse says, “You can keep him for as long as you like.” Relief floods me. I can hardly believe it. I gather the bundle of him and his blankets as close to me as I can, breathing in his baby smell, wishing I could press him through the boundary of my own skin and into my c
ells forever.
Dicken sobs and I hold him. I sob and he holds me. Again there seems to be a natural rhythm, one of us in despair, the other one there to support. We cling to each other after everyone has gone, looking at our baby son together.
At some point, all the ways I’ve resisted what was happening, all the rejection I’ve felt, it all fills me and I begin to shake. Then I am crying hysterically.
“What is it?” Dicken asks. “Are you in pain?”
I shake my head. “I have some terrible things to confess,” I say, when I can speak. I take a big breath. “I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want a baby with problems. I was happy when you told me he was going to die. Part of me was hoping he would.”
The horror of it fills me as I look at my beautiful baby and hold him and wish I could take back all the hurtful things I’d thought. The guilt is crushing. I sob so hard I can’t breathe.
“Of course you felt all that,” Dicken says, gathering me into his arms. “It was all so intense. But you loved him, you loved him so much, and he knew that.”
“But I was relieved when I heard he would die! What kind of a mother am I?”
“You just wanted to know it would all be over soon. You went through so much. And you were there for him when he needed you. That’s what counts, not the brief moments of fear and doubt.”
I cry even harder now, from the release, the relief, the comfort of being held in Dicken’s loving arms, and the sadness bound up in all I’ve been keeping in. I weep for a long time.
Overlaying all the feelings of heartbreak and pain and shock and amazement, there is a palpable state of grace we both marvel at. It is similar to the way we felt the night Jasper was born. An exhausted relief mingled with a joy so profound it’s indescribable. Yet the sadness is so intense, I wonder if I will actually survive it.
*
I cry on and off through the night. Much of the time tears just slide out continuously, and I get so used to them I hardly notice. It is not always painful, not always attached to sadness. It’s a gentle and continual release, like someone is washing my face. Sometimes a violent surge comes over me like a strange, uncontrollable force outside myself, and I have to let it take over. Then the sounds that come out of me are nothing I recognize. They are animal-like, emerging from deep within. At times I’m feel like I’m falling, and I desperately cling to Dicken. Neither of us sleeps.
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