In 2008, my baby in utero was diagnosed with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). Caleb had an open-heart surgery at four days old, spent two weeks in the hospital recovering, lived for five weeks at home, and then had an undetermined traumatic event the Sunday before he turned eight weeks old and passed away in my arms.

Talking to other people who were further down their path of grief also gave me hope that my grief load would get lighter, that I could survive and eventually have a happy life again.

You hear it a lot, but it really was true for me that the first year of grief was the hardest.  Every month represented a new milestone that Caleb would have been hitting if he were still with me. I kept saying to myself, “Caleb would be learning how to sit up this month.” Or I’d catch myself staring in resentment at the little babies born around the same time as Caleb and envying every little accomplishment they made. These “what if’s” were crippling. I tried going to a Helping Hands support group, but they were all sharing memories of their older children. For me, it just made my lack of memories that much harder to deal with.

Then I found two online support systems. First, I was literally kicked out of an HLHS parents’ forum and on the farewell email, they told me about an HLHS Angel Parents’ forum. Then my cousin mentioned a blog that was closed to the public and only invited mothers who had lost a child. Both of these support systems helped immensely.

They helped me know how to deal with grieving siblings, how to answer the innocent probing questions of strangers without falling to pieces, and they told me how to manage well-meaning comments from friends and family that unintentionally hurt more than they helped. Most of all, they showed me that everyone grieves differently and that there is no wrong way to grieve.

Where family and friends could only offer a listening ear, these angel parents could give helpful advice based on their own experiences, and they wouldn’t judge my feelings, which allowed me to vent openly. Sometimes grief isn’t pretty, and it was nice to have a safe place where I didn’t have to pretend that everything was okay. Talking to other people who were further down their path of grief also gave me hope that my grief load would get lighter, that I could survive and eventually have a happy life again.

One of the other Angel moms shared with me a story that really helped put hope and perspective on my grieving process. The speaker compares grief to a piano dropped on stage in the middle of a play. At first, the actors bump into it and get hurt every time they turn around.  The piano seems to consume the stage and disrupt everything. Eventually the actors remember the piano is there, and eventually they find ways to incorporate the piano into the play itself.

I am LDS and going to my church also comforted me and helped me heal. I have to admit that, at first, it was really hard to go to church. I remember sobbing through the whole service one Sunday. Hearing miraculous stories of people being healed was really hard for me, but I knew that ultimately I would gain peace and find the answers I was looking for if I kept going to church.

Everyone has different ways of honoring and remembering their lost loved one. For us, we have two annual traditions. Our first tradition was inspired by a dear family friend who offered to set up a memorial 5k run in Caleb’s honor. Raising money to help other HLHS families gave me something positive to look forward to on Caleb’s birthday. It also showed me that other people loved and cared about Caleb and still supported our family.

Our second tradition happens every Christmas when we hang up a special angel stocking for Caleb. Our family tries to fill up Caleb’s stocking with gifts of service for other people. I love that this tradition keeps Caleb a part of Christmas and also helps our family (especially me) find positive things to do for others.

I still have days where grief takes its hold and won’t let go. Back when we first lost Caleb, these low points seemed to happen often. If I tried to hard to push them away, it seemed like they just got worse. I think it’s important to recognize those feelings and give them a place in your life. Sometimes I wanted life to stand still while I processed everything. Other times, I wanted to move and get going, but didn’t know how to start.

For these days, I found a strategy from another Angel mom that helps me keep functioning and working through things. On hard days, I try and make sure that I do at least one thing physical, spiritual, social, and mental. It really helps me to have a checklist that is flexible while at the same time pushes me to “go through the motions.” Sometimes it feels like the “fake-it-until-you-make-it” strategy, so I want to make sure and add that I wholeheartedly believe that acknowledging your feelings is important, too. I guess for me, this strategy just makes sure that I don’t get stuck while I’m wallowing in my grief.

Blog Author: Kristine Stecker.

The night before you were born, there was so much lightning. It wasn’t raining though, just hot – the hottest night of the year. Sitting on the big blue birth ball, rocking from side to side, I’d rest my head on the hospital bed during the in-between. When a contraction came, I’d sit up, open my eyes and watch the jagged stabs of light through the window as they punctuated the clear, distinct pain in my body.

Later, the white haze of high noon would blur the edges of the clouds. By then, nothing would be clear for me. The pain and the urge to push or not push and the exhaustion and the panic would all run into and over each other, a hot, foggy murk, and I would not know when or if or how you were coming, or what my body was doing, or if both or either of us would survive.

Everyone said it would be a snap. A breeze. A walk in the park. There will be nothing to it, they said. They said, he’ll slide right out. Nothing is like the first one, after that, it’s all downhill. Your body is ready, they said. Your body knows what to do. Your body will take over. You’ve been through it all already.

Everything they said should have been true; but nothing could have prepared me for birthing you.

I cannot say your birth tore me open. My body did not literally tear. Somehow, I managed to expand beyond my own capacity to accommodate not only your body, but also the hands and wrists and forearms of the midwife who reached inside to turn you and free your shoulder from the umbilical cord that had wrapped and twisted its way around you.

And yet, later, I needed to mend.

It’s hard to know what happened to me afterwards, where I went. I thought I knew how to have a baby – how to birth a baby and then how to mother an infant back at home. I’d done it before – I knew how.

But I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know how to handle you, the colic. Who could blame you for being so fussy! You had swallowed so much amniotic fluid, having descended into the birth canal, then waiting there for much longer than you should have. The fluid was in your ears and eyes and belly. You needed to recover from your own birth. You needed to be held all the time, and of course I wanted to hold you, but you have a brother too, and he also needed my love and attention.

It’s not like things ever got That Bad, really.  I was not incapable of joy, because I did laugh and love with you. I could never not get out of bed. I did not want to harm myself or others. I never fantasized about abandoning you or dropping you out of the upstairs window.  I said “no” to many of the criteria on the doctor’s checklist when I finally went, nine months later, to get some medication.

It was hard to describe, other than to say that I didn’t quite feel like myself. But then again, it was hard to know who my “self” was anymore. There was a dark heaviness, an anger and sadness and loneliness. There was a feeling that nothing was wrong, but everything was wrong.

I slept upstairs for months, on the guest futon in my office. I did not know how to be married. I had no space. I felt so empty and hollow and heavy, there was no way anyone could meet me where I was.

It was, and still is, vague and blurry and hard to understand.

Maybe I just needed time to breathe, to mend my overstretched ligaments and allow the holes in my psyche to close back up again, after experiencing what was beyond my comprehension, to replenish the reserves of energy and fortitude that had been used up in birthing you.

Maybe if I had been allowed to stay in the hospital for another day or so I would have been okay. Just some time to collect myself before heading back out into the world where so much would be asked of me.

Maybe it’s because I felt so inept.

Maybe it’s because the only ways I knew to love were suddenly limited by time, attention, and energy.

Maybe it’s because your birth was so difficult, but maybe it’s also because that type of difficulty is not recognized as trauma.

Maybe it’s because I wanted to tell my story – the story of your birth – over and over and over to make sense of it, to find a context, but once everyone knew the basic details – twenty hours of active labor, the cord around your shoulder, no c-section, nine pounds, two ounces, everyone’s fine – they had heard enough.

Maybe I had post-partum depression. Maybe I had a chemical imbalance.

Maybe I just needed help. Everyone had told me – two kids is more like ten kids, the workload increase is exponential, etc., etc. But no one ever said, you will not know how to handle it. You will not know how to love so much, so separately, at the same time, and this not knowing will tear you apart.

Maybe it was simply that I was an almost-forty-year-old woman who spent many long days alone with a toddler and an infant, and I could have used some time to myself.

Maybe it was nothing more than that.

My water broke first. That was a surprise. It hadn’t been that way the first time. Later, I was told that that there is much lore and myth around births where the water breaks before contractions have begun because, contrary to common portrayals on TV, this sequence of events is actually rare.

I had just gotten your brother into the bath and I bent down to kneel beside the tub and there it was, as if the bathwater had overflowed onto the floor. Of course I knew, but I still wanted to be sure. I waited. Soon, there were puddles of amniotic fluid all over the house. We called your grandparents to come for your brother. I stood on the front porch, waving until the car disappeared around the corner into the clear evening light. My heart ached, saying goodbye to an only son, bursting to welcome you.

Back home again when everything was over, I was nostalgic for the hospital. There was a hippie deli down the street, and I missed the tuna sandwich on thick, soft, grainy bread, with tomato and sprouts brought to me on my day of convalescence. I would miss the quiet, the solicitude, and that one night, alone with you, in the bed beside me, swaddled, nursing, as we figured out how to be together with you outside of me.

Afterwards, I wanted to do it again right away, which was crazy, given what I’d just been through. I thought it was the postpartum euphoria, the hormones and dizziness. But the feeling lasted.  I wanted a third. A girl. I felt myself clinging to the hope that I would go through it all again. I knew that if I was going to do it, it was going to have to be now, that I could not make the transition in and out of this space again. I needed to keep the momentum going.  As the months wore on, though, I knew I could not handle more. This was plenty. We were enough.

But first I had to be sad.

I had to be sad that I am not younger. I had to be sad that I didn’t do this sooner. I had to be sad that I’m someone who needs a lot of solitude in order to feel fully whole. I had to be sad that I will never have a daughter, a Violet or Ruby. I had to be sad that your birth marks an ending for me. I had to mourn the loss of possibility, that while it is still technically possible, it is not actually desirable, given our circumstances, our lives, to have more children. I had to actually say the words to myself, “No, I can’t handle more.” And then I had to be sad that I can’t handle more. I needed to be sad that this will be all, and I had to go through all of that to recognize that this is plenty. That you, I, we are enough.

Last time, I had birthed naturally, as I had wanted, but in a traditional hospital, with an O.B. With you, I was going to have a water birth. We had switched OB practices so that I could employ a midwife and use the Alternative Birthing Center and give birth in the giant bathtub. I could labor in water, which was said to be so relaxing and warm and peaceful. Floating took pressure off the joints and alleviated the affects of gravity and you would not be shocked by the sudden change from water to air and I could catch you myself as you slid out.

But the night you were born was the busiest of the year in the birthing wing. Someone said it was because of the lightning, the way it pierced the atmosphere which induced labor. The tub was not available. It’s rare that so many women are laboring at the same time that those who desire the tub suites cannot have them, but as I breathed through my contractions in the triage room, I was told that there was a chance we might not be able to have a water birth.

There was much confusion then, and conferring with various staff members. But I left that to the trusted others to handle, your father and godmother, who were with me in the hospital. I was busy, breathing, focusing, rocking, turning further and further inward in preparation for the work I would do later.

The lightning began to fade as the first signs of daylight appeared in the sky. There was a shift change for the staff, and once my regular midwife showed up, I knew we would be alright. She was taking charge of the situation and said that yes, we could get into the tub room because I had been there longer than the others. I only had to be dilated 5 cm before I could get into the room but that surely that would not be a problem because I had been there all night.

But when she checked, I was only at 2.5 cm, still. I didn’t know why it was taking so long, what was wrong, what I was doing wrong.

Even at this hospital, with all their alternative methods, there were still rules; they followed the standard hospital procedure which allowed no more than 24 hours to elapse between when one’s water breaks and when the baby is delivered. Without amniotic fluid, the theory goes, the baby has no protection from harmful germs and bacteria and is potentially exposed to danger of all kinds.

5 cm to get into the water, 24 hours without water.

5 cm to get into the water, 24 hours without water.

5 cm to get into the water, 24 hours without water.

Later, somehow, in the space between trying to return to normal and recognizing that my notion of normal had vaporized – during the time when I tried to show your brother how much I still loved him and how much attention I still had for him, how much I could still dance and romp and play and be silly, and how much it was okay for him to be mad at me for having a baby, and how it was okay for him to not want me to sit next to him, or tuck him into bed at night, all while trying to figure out what would make you happy, not the car nor the stroller nor the bassinet, only my arms, my breast – somewhere in there a part of myself became dormant, as if stunned into stillness. It felt as if nothing within me was growing, and I had shed all the life I had.

I was already a mother when I had you, so your birth was not the dramatic transformation into something else that had occurred the first time. One birth revealed to me how much I was capable of, was for me about capacity; the other illuminated my limitations, where branches can bend no further, the point of breakage. Both showed me to myself. Both were necessary for me to be whole. At the time I did not know that. At the time I did not recognize that anything was growing or alive, that deep underground, my roots were stretching, absorbing nutrients from the rich soil of my life, of our lives together.

By now I’m tired. I’ve been having steady contractions for fourteen hours already. The tub is open. We are moving. We parade down the hall, carrying pillows from home and clothes and bags and cups of coffee and cups of ice. I feel that I’ve earned this and here we are, the large room with the queen sized bed with the flowered spread and oak headboard. The tub. The tub is full of water and waiting for me, for us. Through the window I see the blue sky and white, puffy clouds. Late morning light. I sink into the tub. Getting close to transition now. The contractions are coming quick and hard and I am breathing and the water feels so good, I lay back, rest, so that only my face and the apex of my belly with its protruding navel are not submerged in water. And then I wait. And nothing happens. When a contraction comes, several minutes later, it is weak, and barely a moan escapes my body. I wait some more. It is afternoon now. We’re close to twenty hours now. I’ve gotten to 8 cm and now my contractions have stopped. I’ve reached transition and now I’m going backwards. I am closing back up.

Out of the tub and into the shower. Out of the shower and on to the bed. A walk down the hall. Nipple stimulation to get contractions going. We’ll try a breast pump. This works – the contractions are back and they are quick and hard and we are ready to go and they are in my back now. There is no water inside me and no cushion. I’m having back labor now and I’m on all fours on the bed and I have never had pain so deep and hot that it pushed me to the edge of consciousness. I do not know who I am. I do not know what I am.

Then back in the tub and do I feel pushy now?

I’m not sure; I can try to push but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to push anymore and it’s not time yet. It should be time, but it’s not time yet. We’re not ready yet. Back into the shower and down the hall and back and nipple stimulation and now I feel pushy. I want to push in the tub but that doesn’t work. We’ll try the bed and now the pain the pain the pain. On my back and I am screaming and I can’t take it. I can’t do it any more. I am done. The contractions are too much, it’s too fast now. It’s happening too fast and too slow and it’s not over yet and it should be and out the window is only white haze and my eyes are blurry. The room is flooded with light and I scream into the light it’s too much I’m pushing now. I’m pushing now. My body is on fire and you will be here now.

I am in and out of that place within me that I have never known before, that I will not remember afterwards, that place that allows my body to take over. That place that pushes me out of itself, that is myself. That is fluid. I will need this later. I will want this later. But my moments here are so fleeting I will not know how to come back and this is not a place to return to, only to bring back with me. But there is no time to come back here, like waking from a dream and wanting to remember it before the day begins.

I am pushing now for you to come but you do not come. You move down but then back up and something is wrong. It is not supposed to happen this way. It’s not supposed to be this way. I am to push and you are to emerge but you are not coming out. You have descended. You can’t stay there too long but you stay. Your head is moving now your head is out. Your skull your brain your mouth your eyes are here but now your body is stuck. We’re both stuck. There is nowhere to go because of where you are and where I am and I am done but you’re not out and there is nothing to do but scream and sob and push and breathe and pray and beg to be cut open but they cannot cut because your head is out and the only way out is through me. It’s not supposed to be this way, your body should slide right out now, but there is the cord. The cord is keeping you here, part of my body holding strong to your body, not letting you out and this is when we could die. Like a flash of lightning, I suddenly know, in my bones and skin and fluid and a new kind of scream, that something is very wrong, that you or I or both of us might not survive this. Darkness descends. But now there are the hands and wrists and forearms, reaching in and turning. I don’t know what is happening, only more pain but there you are now you’ve been turned and you’ll slide out now, and I’m pushing and just like that there you are. You’re out. You’re out now and I’m done. My shaking sobbing body is done.

You are quiet. There is no sound from you yet, not yet not yet and I am waiting for you still and I don’t know I don’t know if –

Here you are. You’re on me now, blue and slimy and crying too and mine. You’re here and you’re okay and we both made it we’re both alive and you’re out and both our hearts are beating and you’re fine and you’re here.

Oh my God – you’re here.

Blog Author: Christine Simokaitis. Christine Simokaitis received an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. Her work is published in Alligator Juniper, Natural Bridge, and in the anthologies Mourning Sickness and Are We Feeling Better Yet? She currently resides in Chicago, Illinois, with her husband and two young sons. She actively writes, teaches, and enjoys life. “Waiting for Elijah” appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of Calyx and is republished here with the author’s permission.

Janet had been waiting years for a baby. Her first three pregnancies had resulted in early miscarriage. Finally, she was pregnant for the fourth time and had only a few weeks before the baby was due. No one could have wanted a baby as badly as she did. But the last thirty-five weeks of waiting had been more stressful than she could have ever imagined. In her mind, she kept thinking that something was going to go wrong. Surely she’d loose this baby just as she had lost each of her previous pregnancies. So she made a conscious effort not to let herself get attached to the baby growing inside of her.

The doctor insisted that Janet, who had been on bed rest since week twenty seven, be induced just as soon as the baby’s lungs were mature enough. In just a few more days, she was scheduled for an amniocentesis. Her bag was packed, she’d crossed everything off her list of what she needed to bring to the hospital.

As Friday came, Janet paced the floor waiting for her husband of three years to get home from school so they could head to the hospital, just a half an hour from their home.

When Scott arrived, Janet nervously handed him her hospital bag and ran one more time to the restroom. The doctor was scheduled to meet them at the hospital to perform the amniocentesis test. He was there on schedule as Janet checked herself into the hospital, providing the necessary paperwork and insurance cards.

Janet was more afraid of the needle than she was of giving birth. However, the test went as planned. She hadn’t eaten all morning though and hadn’t planned on having to stay in the hospital to be monitored. She was surprised when they checked her into a room, and Dr. Moore came in shortly after. They had said they’d only need to monitor the baby for a short time before she could leave the hospital and await the results of the test elsewhere. The results would be in in just a few hours, and Dr. Moore said he wanted to induce her just as soon as he learned the baby’s lungs were mature enough to do so.

Janet, however, was a little confused. She had spent the last few months trying to keep the baby in, and now the doctor was more than a little anxious to get the baby out. She had had to have shots and medication, not only to stop her early contractions, but also steroids shots to help the baby’s lungs mature in case she did deliver early.

Dr. Moore was the best doctor she knew. She had had some terrible doctors before she found him. The first doctor she went to when she was first expecting and was experiencing difficulties had told her it was no more than a urinary tract infection, without even checking the ultrasound. Then she saw Dr. Moore, who cared enough to check the ultrasound, but unfortunately saw her after it was too late to do anything.

“More than likely, you will lose this pregnancy within this week,” he had told her sadly. “But after three miscarriages, most doctors will send you to a specialist. And this will be number three. Next time, we will know what is happening and get it right.”

So Janet truly felt she had fought hard to keep this baby in, and now was weary about letting it out so soon. But, she trusted Dr. Moore, and if he felt that the longer the baby stayed in the more chance she had of something going wrong, she’d trust him. Only she hadn’t expected this. The doctor was in her room with some kind of a noise maker, making sounds on her stomach. When she had asked what it was, he had explained that the baby was not moving or responding since the amniocentesis, and the noise maker would hopefully get her moving around again. Janet had been noticing contractions ever since they finished the test and was a little surprised by their regularity.

Soon enough, she felt the baby jumping around and kicking her in the ribs once more. Dr. Moore released her and said he’d call once he had the test results. The half-hour back to the house seemed unbearable, and Janet didn’t want to wait around at the hospital, so as hungry as she was, she asked her husband if they could go out for a bite to eat.

He took her to a nice Italian restaurant. The nurses had told her that the sooner she got the sterilizing red medicine off, the less likely it would be to stain, so she spent the majority of the time in the restroom with soap and water on a paper towel. One lady had come in and been terribly concerned. After all, here was a pregnant lady with red stuff all over her abdomen.

It turned out that Janet wasn’t as hungry as she thought. She barely had a bite to eat before she lost her appetite from the timely contractions she kept having. Shortly after, the doctor called and confirmed that the baby’s lungs were mature and said that he wanted her at the hospital immediately to start the induction.

When Janet arrived at the hospital that morning, she had considered the probability of delivering that day, but now the reality set in. She could very well be a parent in the next twenty-four hours. When the doctor arrived, he found that her contractions were too regular to use anything too strong to encourage the contractions to continue. He couldn’t use the Cervical, because she was already having to consistent of contractions. So he went with the IV induction liquid and hoped it would do the job.

But the only job it did was put Janet in more pain than she’d remembered ever being in. After twenty-six hours, her contractions were way too hard and close to continue the IV, but she had only dilated to a four. And worst yet, the baby’s heart monitor kept going off.

Janet knew for sure that something was wrong when there were ten nurses in the room, and they had phoned the doctor. When he came in the room, he explained that they’d be performing an emergency cesarean, but was vague on why. Apparently, every time Janet had a contraction, the umbilical cord was being closed off to the baby and her heart beat was dropping below the safety zone.

“Here goes,” Janet thought, “I knew I’d never get to hold this baby anyway, so I guess I prepared myself for something like this going wrong.” She couldn’t hold the tears back, though. Apparently she had become attached to this baby. It was a girl, she knew. She even knew her name. Virginia Rose she’d be called, and Janet had a pretty good idea of what she’d look like too.

No one could have been more surprised than Janet when after only a few minutes of being rushed into the operating room, the doctor held up a little girl, white stuff covering her and screaming like newborns do. Janet looked up at her husband and realized that every minute of what she’d gone through, including the three previous miscarriages, the preterm labor and the bed rest, and twenty-six hours of long labor had been worth it.

She told Scott to please stay by the baby’s side and that she’d be okay. Being a mom was a real thing now. She had waited, and now her dream of being a mother was true. She had reached her goal. But now what?

It didn’t take Janet long to realize that motherhood was not what she expected. She had longed to hold her own baby in her arms for years, but had not envisioned it being like this. Janet had to stay in the recovery room until the doctor okayed her to move into a post-delivery room. But she still hadn’t been able to see her newborn since the doctor had held her up for Janet to see. Thoughts of “what if” ran though her mind as it raced to see what the worst scenario it could come up with was. She kept asking and asking, but none of the nurses seemed concerned about knowing anyone’s condition but hers.

After an eternity of waiting, a pediatrician came in to tell her that her baby was doing fine. “She has low blood sugar, and her oxygen level is low, so we’ll be keeping her in the neonatal intensive care unit until she starts looking better.”

He had sounded promising, but Janet had never experienced anxiety like this. Finally, she begged one of the nurses, who told her she was too weak to get out of her bed just yet, to wheel her bed into the NICU so she could see her baby. Her hospital bed barely fit into the room, but it did. And when she saw the baby, she knew was hers. She couldn’t hold the tears back once more. And just like Scott had promised, he hadn’t left Virginia’s side since she came into the world.

Unfortunately, Janet couldn’t hold Ginny, short for Virginia she’d decided, because of all the monitors and cords she was hooked on to. But she felt better seeing her at least, knowing that everything would be okay, and that was why she was finally able to fall into a deeply needed sleep.

The next day brought most of the same, except the nurses were willing to let Janet hold Ginny and try to nurse her. But Ginny just wanted to sleep. The nurses insisted that Janet try harder, but she ended up only getting frustrated and giving in to the bottle after Ginny had cried and screamed.

“But she needs the first of your milk,” one nurse had said. “There’s nothing that can replace it.”

But her encouragement only made Janet feel like more of a failure. After all, she’d cheated the birthing experience, right? There was nothing natural about being cut open and having the baby pulled out. And she couldn’t tell anyone she’d gone all natural now, like she’d hoped to, because they’d had to give her anesthesia in order to perform the C-section.

Three days later, Janet was still in the hospital. She probably could have been released, but Ginny couldn’t be so what was the point? Ginny had been consistently losing weight. She was born at 5 pounds 11 ounces and now close to 4 pounds. “It’s kind of normal,” the pediatrician had told her. “Just keep trying to breast feed, and if she doesn’t start gaining weight, you’re going to have to go with formula feeding.”

“But I can’t do that,” Janet had told herself. “Cheating birth was bad enough. I have to breastfeed my baby.” So she tried and tried, and no matter what she or the nurses who tried to assist her did, nothing worked.

Janet and Ginny were finally released from the hospital, but Ginny had to come down to visit the pediatrician every day anyway. After another week had passed, and Ginny wasn’t gaining weight, the doctor really put it to her. “Just give her the bottle,” he’d said. And Janet had gone home with lots of bottle food for Ginny, but still feeling like a complete failure as a mother.

“I’ve only been a mom for a week and a half, and look how terrible I am at it!” Janet had confided in her husband later that day. “I can’t feed my own baby, and besides that, I can barely sit up well enough to meet any of her other needs.”

Janet was grateful her mother had been there with her since she’d come home. She seemed to know what to do. After all, she’d given birth to fourteen children.

As the days went by and Janet’s mom had returned home, Janet’s feelings of hopelessness and failure had begun to consume her. She never felt hungry, and when she was alone with her baby, she was more than a little overwhelmed. When Ginny was just two weeks old, Janet had turned to her brother-in-law to watch her so she could go out with Scott alone, even if it was only to the grocery store to get more formula.

After a month, Janet’s realization that motherhood was not what she expected had grown into the theme of her every day. She fed Ginny, changed her, fed her, and then changed her again. Janet had also realized something very strange about herself. She was frightened to give Ginny a bath and to be alone with her at all.

She knew something was wrong, but when she’d asked her mom if she ever felt that way, knowing that if anyone ever had, someone who’d given birth as many times as her mom would have. But her mom had just shrugged and changed the subject.

Janet was counting down the days till graduation, to the time when they’d move back to Scott’s parents’ house for the summer. Fortunately, she’d finished her classes to earn her bachelor’s the month before Ginny was born. After all, there was no way she could have handled school and this baby at the same time.

Virginia was so temperamental. She cried and cried. Janet couldn’t think of a time Ginny wasn’t crying. Janet knew she should be the one getting up and feeding her at night, but she just didn’t have the energy. Scott still had a semester of school left, and she felt guilty every time he’d gotten up with the baby. She also felt guilty about how the minute he’d walk in the door, she’d hand over the baby and run into her room, desperate for a little sleep.

March came and went. Janet went to her six-week checkup and refused to confide in her doctor how she was really feeling. After all, it was probably just the baby blues she’d read about one time. And they didn’t last long. Besides, she had hidden her feelings so well from Scott, whom she’d always confided every detail to before the baby’s birth, so she couldn’t tell her doctor.

It was April now. Graduation day came. Janet and Scott got to walk to receive their diplomas together, hold a luncheon with their families to welcome Virginia Rose into the world, and moved out of their apartment all in one day.

Janet was excited for the first time in weeks to be able come to a home where someone would be with her and Ginny most of the time. They moved into the house with Scott’s parents for the summer to save money for Scott to begin law school in the fall. Scott had found a great job for the summer, and considering they’d already lived there two of the last three summers, there weren’t too many new adjustments to make.

By the time May came along and Ginny turned four months old, Janet realized she wasn’t getting any better. If anything, she was getting worse. “But how was that possible?” she’d asked herself one day.

She knew she needed to talk to someone, but her symptoms had been getting so bad, she dared not confide in anyone. If anyone knew what she was feeling, she knew they’d take Ginny away from her. And Janet loved Ginny. She knew that. She’d gone through too much to get Ginny here to have her taken away. So she kept to herself and put on an excellent facade of being blissfully happy.

She was visiting her sister out of state when everything overwhelmed her all at once. Scott had gone home early to get back to work, but Janet had stayed. “What is bothering you?” Mary had asked. “I know something is wrong. I know you’re not scared of the dark, yet you used that excuse to have someone stay in the guest house with you and Ginny.”

Janet couldn’t hold it back any longer. “I am a failure as a mother. I have thoughts of harming my baby all the time, and I’m so afraid I might actually do it!”

Mary didn’t seem as shocked as Janet had expected. She held her and let her cry and cry. “I didn’t know I had any tears left,” Janet said as soon as she could speak. “I’ve been crying nonstop ever since Ginny was born, and I thought it’d go away. Obviously, I was wrong.”

Fortunately, Mary was in the beginning of medical school and was currently enrolled in a psychology class. “You know, Janet,” she said understandingly, “You’re not a failure, and this is not your fault.”

Mary proceeded to draw a map of the brain and explain the process of serotonin and other chemicals in the brain. “What’s going on with you is a lot like having a broken leg. If you had a broken leg, what would you do? Walk on it until you could walk no more?” Between her sobs, Janet was able to get out that she’d probably go see a doctor.

Even though it was late, Mary convinced Janet to call Dr. Moore and drove her to his office the next day to pick up some medication. Dr. Moore told Janet to start taking the medication immediately, but that she needed to see a psychiatrist as soon as possible. After Janet promised Mary and Dr. Moore that she would, she flew home to her still unknowing husband.

Janet, who’d always been 100% honest with Scott in all the years they’d been married, didn’t understand why she had such a hard time telling him what was happening. So, she put on her happy face and went another month before breaking down and setting up an appointment with a psychiatrist like she’d been told to. She figured that once she had her appointment, she’d have to talk with Scott and so had done her best to avoid it.

When she finally felt ready to talk to him, she left out the major detail of her thoughts and just told him about her lack of energy and appetite. “I just need to talk to someone about it,” she’d told him. Deep down, she knew why she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. “He’ll send me far away. He won’t let me be close to my baby ever again if he knows what I think when I am near her,” Janet had told herself. Somehow she knew he wouldn’t really do that, but the “what if” demon had taken her a long way down the worst case scenario street.

So when she went to her appointment, she didn’t even let him go in with her. She wasn’t 100% honest with the psychiatrist right off either, but fortunately the appointment was worth her visit. Having moved out of state after graduation, Dr. Moore was no longer close by, and Janet hadn’t found a doctor she felt comfortable seeing. Julie, the psychiatrist, scheduled an appointment with an obstetrician to help her start getting her hormones back in balance. She raised the medication Janet was currently on after seeing no benefits from it after six weeks and talked to her about the importance of eating healthy, exercising, and getting enough rest.

Janet knew she was getting more than enough rest, though. The only way she dealt with the thoughts she was having was by putting Ginny and herself down for a nap whenever they were alone, which was more frequent than Janet had hoped it would be. She hardly remembered the last six months. They were all a blur, probably because she actually had slept through most of it.

When Janet was awake, demanding thoughts kept entering her mind. “Ginny would be better off without you. You know it, and I do too! You know everyone would be better off without you. You are a terrible mother and a horrible wife. People would be a lot happier if you were gone.”

Those weren’t the worst of her thoughts though. The worst was when thoughts of harming Ginny came into her mind. Janet couldn’t stand being around the windows, water, fireplaces, or anywhere near the kitchen because of the images kept creeping into her mind. Something kept telling her how much better Ginny would be if neither of them were alive.

The hardest part for Janet was that she knew these thoughts were not her own. She knew it. Yet, somehow it kept getting harder to distinguish her thoughts from this great “if only” and even it began to be an “only if” thought. Janet felt consumed by these thoughts, as well as controlled by them, because she was slowly losing her sense of reality and her ability to distinguish thoughts that were her own.

What Janet hadn’t realized until Mary had pointed it out was that the thoughts were not going to go away on their own. Or her own. Ginny was six months old, and everything had been getting worse and worse.

Over the next few weeks, Janet focused on exercising and eating lots of protein. She met with the physiatrist, Julie, once a week. What she hadn’t expected, though, was that this whole process would take as long as it was now taking.

Janet had somehow thought that as soon as she met with the physiatrist, all her problems would disappear. What she was now realizing was how much work this was going to take. After all, trying new medication every few weeks and waiting to see if it was the right one for her was taking more patience than she had. Then came the day that Julie insisted on Scott being in one of her sessions.

“Scott,” Julie said, “do you realize the severity of this situation?”

“Sure,” Scott said, thinking Janet confided more in him than this person she had barely met.

“So you know Janet is not allowed to be alone with Ginny? Or with herself for that matter?”

Scott looked at Janet in alarm. “I guess I didn’t realize it was that serious. I thought Janet just had the baby blues?”

“Janet,” Julie said, “I think you better tell Scott what your worst thought has been.”

Janet had begun confiding in Julie more each week. She couldn’t help but be terrified of what would happen next as the great “what if” had been working more and more on her each day, telling her what would happen if Scott found out. “He’ll leave me. I know it, and he’ll take my baby with him.” Janet had recently concluded when deciding not to tell Scott any details.

“Scott, I know that law school starts in just a week. I know you’re planning on moving and that Janet and Ginny will be moving into an apartment on the other side of the state with you,” Julie told Scott. “Only I’m not sure you realize the seriousness of all of this. If you move and go to school like you have planned, Janet will be left home with Ginny all day, not to mention all night, as I’m sure you’ll be spending a lot of time studying. To help you realize how serious this is, I will just tell you now, that should you precede as planned, I will be contacting Child Protective Services, and I doubt you’ll be happy with the results of that. I think I’ll just let Janet take it from here and end today’s session.”

As furious as Janet was that Julie had broken her confidence, she honestly felt a little relieved to not have to hide such a big secret from Scott. After all, she’d never kept secrets from him, not one. But when they got into the car to head home, the relief melted away as Scott spoke.

“Janet, Julie has just asked me to give up an awful lot based on something I didn’t know was such a big deal. I will make the necessary changes, but it’s going to be a lot harder to do based only on what Julie is telling me. I don’t know what to believe. I thought you were just a little down? Can you tell me what your worst thought has been, like Julie asked you to?”

Janet couldn’t fight the tears she’d been holding back any longer. She cried. And cried. And cried. When she was finally had no more tears to cry, she spoke in a very soft voice, “Scott, I’m afraid to tell you for fear of losing Ginny, but the truth is, even if someone does take Ginny away from me, at least she’ll be better off. I only want was best for her.

“You asked for my worst thought, so here it is. Last week, just the day after we’d gone for a walk by the river, I drove back over the bridge and stopped the car. I came so close to putting Ginny in that river, where the water flows the fastest, that it scared me. It scared me so much. I haven’t driven or held her since.”

Scott reached out as Janet fell into his lap and sobbed tears she thought she had no more of. He held her and gently stroked her cheek, wiping her tears as they fell down her face. She continued to describe how long and deeply she’d been dealing with her thoughts of hopelessness that had accompanied her after the birth of her daughter.

Later that night when they returned home, Scott informed the law school of his decision to withdraw. He wanted to take Janet’s suffering away, and realizing he could only ease it, he developed a plan so she would never have to be alone with her thoughts again. He was grateful they had decided to stay with his parents after all and began to realize how important having their help would be.

Janet was surprised at the support she received from both her parents-in-law and from Scott, although she knew she shouldn’t have been. She’d always known they’d be there for her, but hadn’t realized how much sharing her burden would release her from the bitter world she’d been living in since Ginny’s birth.

Scott quit his summer job, just a week shy of his last day, to accommodate they psychiatrist’s orders and be home to care for his girls.

“Thank you for telling me,” he told Janet one night. “I had no idea what you were going through. My only wish is that you had told me sooner. You have been suffering too long.”

“I was so afraid you’d want to get rid of me, the monster who wanted to hurt your baby, so much that I just couldn’t bring myself to. But now I know I was wrong and that you’d never do that. I wish I would have told you sooner, too. Julie says that the longer this kind of thing goes untreated, the worse it can get.”

“Everything is going to be alright now,” Scott said. “I know we still have a long path of recovery, but now that we’re sharing the burden, everything is going to be okay. I’ll always be here for you, and I’d never think of leaving you alone in this. You’re my wife, the mother of my child, and I will always love you. I am sorry I didn’t notice sooner. Looking back now, I guess I should have read the signs.”

“That’s all in the past now, and considering how much I tried to hide it, I don’t see how you could have known,” Janet said. “I just feel bad about you not being able to go to law school like you’d planned. I feel a lot of guilt about everything, and knowing that I made you give up your dream makes me feel even worse. Do you think the law school here would let you in still? I know we turned them down before, and that class would start really soon, but maybe they’d still take you?”

Although Scott didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the health of his girls, upon Janet’s insistence, he finally called the local law school, learning that they were not only willing to allow him admittance, but also to give him the academic scholarship he’d been awarded when he’d been accepted there originally, and they were willing to let him take night classes so he could be home with Janet and Ginny during the day. While his parents, Ben and Emily, both worked during the day, they were both home at night and could take it over the girls’ care after they got home.

While things looked brighter for Janet than they had for several months and her lonesome suffering seemed to be over, the worst was yet to come. As the doctors continued to try for the right medication combination and Janet continued counseling, she continually fought the battle of what was now diagnosed as the postpartum mood disorder postpartum psychosis.

What Janet found interesting was that the professionals she saw never used the term in front of her. Most used some form of the word, “postpartum depression.” It wasn’t until Janet found a website open on the computer that she realized Scott and his parents had been told something she hadn’t.

As she read the content, she was surprised to find her symptoms matching those described on the screen. Words like, “most extreme, rarest, form of postpartum mood disorders” and “losing touch with reality” accurately described her last few months. “Hallucinations, delusions, illogical thoughts, insomnia, refusing to eat, extreme feelings of anxiety and agitation, periods of delirium or mania, suicidal or homicidal thoughts” appeared on the screen.

She continued to stare in shock as she read about how few women speak to someone about their problem and sadly read on to see the tragic consequences that come from women failing to speak up about their symptoms. Stranger to her still was that she didn’t have even one of the qualities that puts a woman at higher risk. Neither her nor any of her immediate family members had experienced any kind of depression, been bipolar, or suffered from schizophrenia.

Janet watched herself in the mirror later that night, remembering how long it had taken her to speak up, and slowly realized that the professionals’ definitions of the sickness met her idea of qualifying someone as crazy or psychotic. Except this time, it wasn’t someone else, and the words hit home. “I am crazy,” she thought, wondering how anyone could stand to be around her.

She was exceedingly grateful for the right diagnosis, though. In her reading, she found a common theme of professionals misdiagnosing the problem as postpartum depression and the subsequent mistreatment that followed. She was sad to realize that she still had a long road ahead of her. According to the article, most women suffer postpartum depression after their postpartum psychosis symptoms have subsided. Realizing the road she had yet to travel, paranoia definitely set in and rated at the top of her list of symptoms.

Janet suddenly felt startled as she thought back to how hard and long the process of getting Ginny into the world had been. “Only moms who don’t want their children have things like this happen to them,” Janet incorrectly thought to herself. “I wanted Ginny so badly. I just don’t understand how something like this could be happening to me.”

Then she remembered what her psychiatrist had said about how actually, most women who work the hardest and want children the most suffer with postpartum mood disorders. “None of this makes sense,” Janet realized as she laid in bed for yet another night of sleeplessness.

Blog Author: This blog author has asked to remain anonymous. All names in this story have been changed. I have two beautiful daughters. I had postpartum psychosis with my first daughter. I have had no postpartum mood disorders at all whatsoever with my second.

For those of you desperately reaching for hope, you will find it. This trial will become a blessing in your life, as it has mine. I am healed. What I have learned from this dark chapter in my life is that “this, too, shall pass.”

I have learned that like any of life’s trials, the only way to make it through is to have faith in our Savior, Jesus Christ. Faith that He will protect you. Faith that He will preserve your child. Faith that Jesus Christ Himself has felt what you are feeling in a way that allows Him to succor you. He is there. Even when you feel your prayers are bouncing off a cement ceiling, never leaving the ground. He is there. He is listening. He will guide you. He will direct you. He will protect you. He will protect your children and watch over them.

If you feel as I felt, unworthy and an enormous amount of guilt associated with the fact that you have this trial in your life, the truth is no matter how righteously you live your life, trials happen. No matter how much you love your child, trials happen. The purpose of life is not to avoid trails. The purpose of life is to let them refine you, as it has me.I am more patient. I am more kind. I am quick to forgive. I know that I have no control over what trials come into my life. I have turned my life over to Christ.

What I can promise you now is that as you put your trust in the Lord and when you feel those worrisome thoughts or unwanted anxiety, push it out of your mind and say, “Let God’s will be done, and His timing also. I don’t need to check if my daughter is breathing. I don’t need to worry she’ll fall out of the window. God Himself is watching over and protecting her. I do my best, and He makes up for the rest. All is well.”

Janet had been waiting years for a baby. Her first three pregnancies had resulted in early miscarriage. Finally, she was pregnant for the fourth time and had only a few weeks before the baby was due. No one could have wanted a baby as badly as she did. But the last thirty-five weeks of waiting had been more stressful than she could have ever imagined. In her mind, she kept thinking that something was going to go wrong. Surely she’d loose this baby just as she had lost each of her previous pregnancies. So she made a conscious effort not to let herself get attached to the baby growing inside of her.

The doctor insisted that Janet, who had been on bed rest since week twenty seven, be induced just as soon as the baby’s lungs were mature enough. In just a few more days, she was scheduled for an amniocentesis. Her bag was packed, she’d crossed everything off her list of what she needed to bring to the hospital.

As Friday came, Janet paced the floor waiting for her husband of three years to get home from school so they could head to the hospital, just a half an hour from their home.

When Scott arrived, Janet nervously handed him her hospital bag and ran one more time to the restroom. The doctor was scheduled to meet them at the hospital to perform the amniocentesis test. He was there on schedule as Janet checked herself into the hospital, providing the necessary paperwork and insurance cards.

Janet was more afraid of the needle than she was of giving birth. However, the test went as planned. She hadn’t eaten all morning though and hadn’t planned on having to stay in the hospital to be monitored. She was surprised when they checked her into a room, and Dr. Moore came in shortly after. They had said they’d only need to monitor the baby for a short time before she could leave the hospital and await the results of the test elsewhere. The results would be in in just a few hours, and Dr. Moore said he wanted to induce her just as soon as he learned the baby’s lungs were mature enough to do so.

Janet, however, was a little confused. She had spent the last few months trying to keep the baby in, and now the doctor was more than a little anxious to get the baby out. She had had to have shots and medication, not only to stop her early contractions, but also steroids shots to help the baby’s lungs mature in case she did deliver early.

Dr. Moore was the best doctor she knew. She had had some terrible doctors before she found him. The first doctor she went to when she was first expecting and was experiencing difficulties had told her it was no more than a urinary tract infection, without even checking the ultrasound. Then she saw Dr. Moore, who cared enough to check the ultrasound, but unfortunately saw her after it was too late to do anything.

“More than likely, you will lose this pregnancy within this week,” he had told her sadly. “But after three miscarriages, most doctors will send you to a specialist. And this will be number three. Next time, we will know what is happening and get it right.”

So Janet truly felt she had fought hard to keep this baby in, and now was weary about letting it out so soon. But, she trusted Dr. Moore, and if he felt that the longer the baby stayed in the more chance she had of something going wrong, she’d trust him. Only she hadn’t expected this. The doctor was in her room with some kind of a noise maker, making sounds on her stomach. When she had asked what it was, he had explained that the baby was not moving or responding since the amniocentesis, and the noise maker would hopefully get her moving around again. Janet had been noticing contractions ever since they finished the test and was a little surprised by their regularity.

Soon enough, she felt the baby jumping around and kicking her in the ribs once more. Dr. Moore released her and said he’d call once he had the test results. The half-hour back to the house seemed unbearable, and Janet didn’t want to wait around at the hospital, so as hungry as she was, she asked her husband if they could go out for a bite to eat.

He took her to a nice Italian restaurant. The nurses had told her that the sooner she got the sterilizing red medicine off, the less likely it would be to stain, so she spent the majority of the time in the restroom with soap and water on a paper towel. One lady had come in and been terribly concerned. After all, here was a pregnant lady with red stuff all over her abdomen.

It turned out that Janet wasn’t as hungry as she thought. She barely had a bite to eat before she lost her appetite from the timely contractions she kept having. Shortly after, the doctor called and confirmed that the baby’s lungs were mature and said that he wanted her at the hospital immediately to start the induction.

When Janet arrived at the hospital that morning, she had considered the probability of delivering that day, but now the reality set in. She could very well be a parent in the next twenty-four hours. When the doctor arrived, he found that her contractions were too regular to use anything too strong to encourage the contractions to continue. He couldn’t use the Cervical, because she was already having to consistent of contractions. So he went with the IV induction liquid and hoped it would do the job.

But the only job it did was put Janet in more pain than she’d remembered ever being in. After twenty-six hours, her contractions were way too hard and close to continue the IV, but she had only dilated to a four. And worst yet, the baby’s heart monitor kept going off.

Janet knew for sure that something was wrong when there were ten nurses in the room, and they had phoned the doctor. When he came in the room, he explained that they’d be performing an emergency cesarean, but was vague on why. Apparently, every time Janet had a contraction, the umbilical cord was being closed off to the baby and her heart beat was dropping below the safety zone.

“Here goes,” Janet thought, “I knew I’d never get to hold this baby anyway, so I guess I prepared myself for something like this going wrong.” She couldn’t hold the tears back, though. Apparently she had become attached to this baby. It was a girl, she knew. She even knew her name. Virginia Rose she’d be called, and Janet had a pretty good idea of what she’d look like too.

No one could have been more surprised than Janet when after only a few minutes of being rushed into the operating room, the doctor held up a little girl, white stuff covering her and screaming like newborns do. Janet looked up at her husband and realized that every minute of what she’d gone through, including the three previous miscarriages, the preterm labor and the bed rest, and twenty-six hours of long labor had been worth it.

She told Scott to please stay by the baby’s side and that she’d be okay. Being a mom was a real thing now. She had waited, and now her dream of being a mother was true. She had reached her goal. But now what?

It didn’t take Janet long to realize that motherhood was not what she expected. She had longed to hold her own baby in her arms for years, but had not envisioned it being like this. Janet had to stay in the recovery room until the doctor okayed her to move into a post-delivery room. But she still hadn’t been able to see her newborn since the doctor had held her up for Janet to see. Thoughts of “what if” ran though her mind as it raced to see what the worst scenario it could come up with was. She kept asking and asking, but none of the nurses seemed concerned about knowing anyone’s condition but hers.

After an eternity of waiting, a pediatrician came in to tell her that her baby was doing fine. “She has low blood sugar, and her oxygen level is low, so we’ll be keeping her in the neonatal intensive care unit until she starts looking better.”

He had sounded promising, but Janet had never experienced anxiety like this. Finally, she begged one of the nurses, who told her she was too weak to get out of her bed just yet, to wheel her bed into the NICU so she could see her baby. Her hospital bed barely fit into the room, but it did. And when she saw the baby, she knew was hers. She couldn’t hold the tears back once more. And just like Scott had promised, he hadn’t left Virginia’s side since she came into the world.

Unfortunately, Janet couldn’t hold Ginny, short for Virginia she’d decided, because of all the monitors and cords she was hooked on to. But she felt better seeing her at least, knowing that everything would be okay, and that was why she was finally able to fall into a deeply needed sleep.

The next day brought most of the same, except the nurses were willing to let Janet hold Ginny and try to nurse her. But Ginny just wanted to sleep. The nurses insisted that Janet try harder, but she ended up only getting frustrated and giving in to the bottle after Ginny had cried and screamed.

“But she needs the first of your milk,” one nurse had said. “There’s nothing that can replace it.”

But her encouragement only made Janet feel like more of a failure. After all, she’d cheated the birthing experience, right? There was nothing natural about being cut open and having the baby pulled out. And she couldn’t tell anyone she’d gone all natural now, like she’d hoped to, because they’d had to give her anesthesia in order to perform the C-section.

Three days later, Janet was still in the hospital. She probably could have been released, but Ginny couldn’t be so what was the point? Ginny had been consistently losing weight. She was born at 5 pounds 11 ounces and now close to 4 pounds. “It’s kind of normal,” the pediatrician had told her. “Just keep trying to breast feed, and if she doesn’t start gaining weight, you’re going to have to go with formula feeding.”

“But I can’t do that,” Janet had told herself. “Cheating birth was bad enough. I have to breastfeed my baby.” So she tried and tried, and no matter what she or the nurses who tried to assist her did, nothing worked.

Janet and Ginny were finally released from the hospital, but Ginny had to come down to visit the pediatrician every day anyway. After another week had passed, and Ginny wasn’t gaining weight, the doctor really put it to her. “Just give her the bottle,” he’d said. And Janet had gone home with lots of bottle food for Ginny, but still feeling like a complete failure as a mother.

“I’ve only been a mom for a week and a half, and look how terrible I am at it!” Janet had confided in her husband later that day. “I can’t feed my own baby, and besides that, I can barely sit up well enough to meet any of her other needs.”

Janet was grateful her mother had been there with her since she’d come home. She seemed to know what to do. After all, she’d given birth to fourteen children.

As the days went by and Janet’s mom had returned home, Janet’s feelings of hopelessness and failure had begun to consume her. She never felt hungry, and when she was alone with her baby, she was more than a little overwhelmed. When Ginny was just two weeks old, Janet had turned to her brother-in-law to watch her so she could go out with Scott alone, even if it was only to the grocery store to get more formula.

After a month, Janet’s realization that motherhood was not what she expected had grown into the theme of her every day. She fed Ginny, changed her, fed her, and then changed her again. Janet had also realized something very strange about herself. She was frightened to give Ginny a bath and to be alone with her at all.

She knew something was wrong, but when she’d asked her mom if she ever felt that way, knowing that if anyone ever had, someone who’d given birth as many times as her mom would have. But her mom had just shrugged and changed the subject.

Janet was counting down the days till graduation, to the time when they’d move back to Scott’s parents’ house for the summer. Fortunately, she’d finished her classes to earn her bachelor’s the month before Ginny was born. After all, there was no way she could have handled school and this baby at the same time.

Virginia was so temperamental. She cried and cried. Janet couldn’t think of a time Ginny wasn’t crying. Janet knew she should be the one getting up and feeding her at night, but she just didn’t have the energy. Scott still had a semester of school left, and she felt guilty every time he’d gotten up with the baby. She also felt guilty about how the minute he’d walk in the door, she’d hand over the baby and run into her room, desperate for a little sleep.

March came and went. Janet went to her six-week checkup and refused to confide in her doctor how she was really feeling. After all, it was probably just the baby blues she’d read about one time. And they didn’t last long. Besides, she had hidden her feelings so well from Scott, whom she’d always confided every detail to before the baby’s birth, so she couldn’t tell her doctor.

It was April now. Graduation day came. Janet and Scott got to walk to receive their diplomas together, hold a luncheon with their families to welcome Virginia Rose into the world, and moved out of their apartment all in one day.

Janet was excited for the first time in weeks to be able come to a home where someone would be with her and Ginny most of the time. They moved into the house with Scott’s parents for the summer to save money for Scott to begin law school in the fall. Scott had found a great job for the summer, and considering they’d already lived there two of the last three summers, there weren’t too many new adjustments to make.

By the time May came along and Ginny turned four months old, Janet realized she wasn’t getting any better. If anything, she was getting worse. “But how was that possible?” she’d asked herself one day.

She knew she needed to talk to someone, but her symptoms had been getting so bad, she dared not confide in anyone. If anyone knew what she was feeling, she knew they’d take Ginny away from her. And Janet loved Ginny. She knew that. She’d gone through too much to get Ginny here to have her taken away. So she kept to herself and put on an excellent facade of being blissfully happy.

She was visiting her sister out of state when everything overwhelmed her all at once. Scott had gone home early to get back to work, but Janet had stayed. “What is bothering you?” Mary had asked. “I know something is wrong. I know you’re not scared of the dark, yet you used that excuse to have someone stay in the guest house with you and Ginny.”

Janet couldn’t hold it back any longer. “I am a failure as a mother. I have thoughts of harming my baby all the time, and I’m so afraid I might actually do it!”

Mary didn’t seem as shocked as Janet had expected. She held her and let her cry and cry. “I didn’t know I had any tears left,” Janet said as soon as she could speak. “I’ve been crying nonstop ever since Ginny was born, and I thought it’d go away. Obviously, I was wrong.”

Fortunately, Mary was in the beginning of medical school and was currently enrolled in a psychology class. “You know, Janet,” she said understandingly, “You’re not a failure, and this is not your fault.”

Mary proceeded to draw a map of the brain and explain the process of serotonin and other chemicals in the brain. “What’s going on with you is a lot like having a broken leg. If you had a broken leg, what would you do? Walk on it until you could walk no more?” Between her sobs, Janet was able to get out that she’d probably go see a doctor.

Even though it was late, Mary convinced Janet to call Dr. Moore and drove her to his office the next day to pick up some medication. Dr. Moore told Janet to start taking the medication immediately, but that she needed to see a psychiatrist as soon as possible. After Janet promised Mary and Dr. Moore that she would, she flew home to her still unknowing husband.

Janet, who’d always been 100% honest with Scott in all the years they’d been married, didn’t understand why she had such a hard time telling him what was happening. So, she put on her happy face and went another month before breaking down and setting up an appointment with a psychiatrist like she’d been told to. She figured that once she had her appointment, she’d have to talk with Scott and so had done her best to avoid it.

When she finally felt ready to talk to him, she left out the major detail of her thoughts and just told him about her lack of energy and appetite. “I just need to talk to someone about it,” she’d told him. Deep down, she knew why she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. “He’ll send me far away. He won’t let me be close to my baby ever again if he knows what I think when I am near her,” Janet had told herself. Somehow she knew he wouldn’t really do that, but the “what if” demon had taken her a long way down the worst case scenario street.

So when she went to her appointment, she didn’t even let him go in with her. She wasn’t 100% honest with the psychiatrist right off either, but fortunately the appointment was worth her visit. Having moved out of state after graduation, Dr. Moore was no longer close by, and Janet hadn’t found a doctor she felt comfortable seeing. Julie, the psychiatrist, scheduled an appointment with an obstetrician to help her start getting her hormones back in balance. She raised the medication Janet was currently on after seeing no benefits from it after six weeks and talked to her about the importance of eating healthy, exercising, and getting enough rest.

Janet knew she was getting more than enough rest, though. The only way she dealt with the thoughts she was having was by putting Ginny and herself down for a nap whenever they were alone, which was more frequent than Janet had hoped it would be. She hardly remembered the last six months. They were all a blur, probably because she actually had slept through most of it.

When Janet was awake, demanding thoughts kept entering her mind. “Ginny would be better off without you. You know it, and I do too! You know everyone would be better off without you. You are a terrible mother and a horrible wife. People would be a lot happier if you were gone.”

Those weren’t the worst of her thoughts though. The worst was when thoughts of harming Ginny came into her mind. Janet couldn’t stand being around the windows, water, fireplaces, or anywhere near the kitchen because of the images kept creeping into her mind. Something kept telling her how much better Ginny would be if neither of them were alive.

The hardest part for Janet was that she knew these thoughts were not her own. She knew it. Yet, somehow it kept getting harder to distinguish her thoughts from this great “if only” and even it began to be an “only if” thought. Janet felt consumed by these thoughts, as well as controlled by them, because she was slowly losing her sense of reality and her ability to distinguish thoughts that were her own.

What Janet hadn’t realized until Mary had pointed it out was that the thoughts were not going to go away on their own. Or her own. Ginny was six months old, and everything had been getting worse and worse.

Over the next few weeks, Janet focused on exercising and eating lots of protein. She met with the physiatrist, Julie, once a week. What she hadn’t expected, though, was that this whole process would take as long as it was now taking.

Janet had somehow thought that as soon as she met with the physiatrist, all her problems would disappear. What she was now realizing was how much work this was going to take. After all, trying new medication every few weeks and waiting to see if it was the right one for her was taking more patience than she had. Then came the day that Julie insisted on Scott being in one of her sessions.

“Scott,” Julie said, “do you realize the severity of this situation?”

“Sure,” Scott said, thinking Janet confided more in him than this person she had barely met.

“So you know Janet is not allowed to be alone with Ginny? Or with herself for that matter?”

Scott looked at Janet in alarm. “I guess I didn’t realize it was that serious. I thought Janet just had the baby blues?”

“Janet,” Julie said, “I think you better tell Scott what your worst thought has been.”

Janet had begun confiding in Julie more each week. She couldn’t help but be terrified of what would happen next as the great “what if” had been working more and more on her each day, telling her what would happen if Scott found out. “He’ll leave me. I know it, and he’ll take my baby with him.” Janet had recently concluded when deciding not to tell Scott any details.

“Scott, I know that law school starts in just a week. I know you’re planning on moving and that Janet and Ginny will be moving into an apartment on the other side of the state with you,” Julie told Scott. “Only I’m not sure you realize the seriousness of all of this. If you move and go to school like you have planned, Janet will be left home with Ginny all day, not to mention all night, as I’m sure you’ll be spending a lot of time studying. To help you realize how serious this is, I will just tell you now, that should you precede as planned, I will be contacting Child Protective Services, and I doubt you’ll be happy with the results of that. I think I’ll just let Janet take it from here and end today’s session.”

As furious as Janet was that Julie had broken her confidence, she honestly felt a little relieved to not have to hide such a big secret from Scott. After all, she’d never kept secrets from him, not one. But when they got into the car to head home, the relief melted away as Scott spoke.

“Janet, Julie has just asked me to give up an awful lot based on something I didn’t know was such a big deal. I will make the necessary changes, but it’s going to be a lot harder to do based only on what Julie is telling me. I don’t know what to believe. I thought you were just a little down? Can you tell me what your worst thought has been, like Julie asked you to?”

Janet couldn’t fight the tears she’d been holding back any longer. She cried. And cried. And cried. When she was finally had no more tears to cry, she spoke in a very soft voice, “Scott, I’m afraid to tell you for fear of losing Ginny, but the truth is, even if someone does take Ginny away from me, at least she’ll be better off. I only want was best for her.

“You asked for my worst thought, so here it is. Last week, just the day after we’d gone for a walk by the river, I drove back over the bridge and stopped the car. I came so close to putting Ginny in that river, where the water flows the fastest, that it scared me. It scared me so much. I haven’t driven or held her since.”

Scott reached out as Janet fell into his lap and sobbed tears she thought she had no more of. He held her and gently stroked her cheek, wiping her tears as they fell down her face. She continued to describe how long and deeply she’d been dealing with her thoughts of hopelessness that had accompanied her after the birth of her daughter.

Later that night when they returned home, Scott informed the law school of his decision to withdraw. He wanted to take Janet’s suffering away, and realizing he could only ease it, he developed a plan so she would never have to be alone with her thoughts again. He was grateful they had decided to stay with his parents after all and began to realize how important having their help would be.

Janet was surprised at the support she received from both her parents-in-law and from Scott, although she knew she shouldn’t have been. She’d always known they’d be there for her, but hadn’t realized how much sharing her burden would release her from the bitter world she’d been living in since Ginny’s birth.

Scott quit his summer job, just a week shy of his last day, to accommodate they psychiatrist’s orders and be home to care for his girls.

“Thank you for telling me,” he told Janet one night. “I had no idea what you were going through. My only wish is that you had told me sooner. You have been suffering too long.”

“I was so afraid you’d want to get rid of me, the monster who wanted to hurt your baby, so much that I just couldn’t bring myself to. But now I know I was wrong and that you’d never do that. I wish I would have told you sooner, too. Julie says that the longer this kind of thing goes untreated, the worse it can get.”

“Everything is going to be alright now,” Scott said. “I know we still have a long path of recovery, but now that we’re sharing the burden, everything is going to be okay. I’ll always be here for you, and I’d never think of leaving you alone in this. You’re my wife, the mother of my child, and I will always love you. I am sorry I didn’t notice sooner. Looking back now, I guess I should have read the signs.”

“That’s all in the past now, and considering how much I tried to hide it, I don’t see how you could have known,” Janet said. “I just feel bad about you not being able to go to law school like you’d planned. I feel a lot of guilt about everything, and knowing that I made you give up your dream makes me feel even worse. Do you think the law school here would let you in still? I know we turned them down before, and that class would start really soon, but maybe they’d still take you?”

Although Scott didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the health of his girls, upon Janet’s insistence, he finally called the local law school, learning that they were not only willing to allow him admittance, but also to give him the academic scholarship he’d been awarded when he’d been accepted there originally, and they were willing to let him take night classes so he could be home with Janet and Ginny during the day. While his parents, Ben and Emily, both worked during the day, they were both home at night and could take it over the girls’ care after they got home.

While things looked brighter for Janet than they had for several months and her lonesome suffering seemed to be over, the worst was yet to come. As the doctors continued to try for the right medication combination and Janet continued counseling, she continually fought the battle of what was now diagnosed as the postpartum mood disorder postpartum psychosis.

What Janet found interesting was that the professionals she saw never used the term in front of her. Most used some form of the word, “postpartum depression.” It wasn’t until Janet found a website open on the computer that she realized Scott and his parents had been told something she hadn’t.

As she read the content, she was surprised to find her symptoms matching those described on the screen. Words like, “most extreme, rarest, form of postpartum mood disorders” and “losing touch with reality” accurately described her last few months. “Hallucinations, delusions, illogical thoughts, insomnia, refusing to eat, extreme feelings of anxiety and agitation, periods of delirium or mania, suicidal or homicidal thoughts” appeared on the screen.

She continued to stare in shock as she read about how few women speak to someone about their problem and sadly read on to see the tragic consequences that come from women failing to speak up about their symptoms. Stranger to her still was that she didn’t have even one of the qualities that puts a woman at higher risk. Neither her nor any of her immediate family members had experienced any kind of depression, been bipolar, or suffered from schizophrenia.

Janet watched herself in the mirror later that night, remembering how long it had taken her to speak up, and slowly realized that the professionals’ definitions of the sickness met her idea of qualifying someone as crazy or psychotic. Except this time, it wasn’t someone else, and the words hit home. “I am crazy,” she thought, wondering how anyone could stand to be around her.

She was exceedingly grateful for the right diagnosis, though. In her reading, she found a common theme of professionals misdiagnosing the problem as postpartum depression and the subsequent mistreatment that followed. She was sad to realize that she still had a long road ahead of her. According to the article, most women suffer postpartum depression after their postpartum psychosis symptoms have subsided. Realizing the road she had yet to travel, paranoia definitely set in and rated at the top of her list of symptoms.

Janet suddenly felt startled as she thought back to how hard and long the process of getting Ginny into the world had been. “Only moms who don’t want their children have things like this happen to them,” Janet incorrectly thought to herself. “I wanted Ginny so badly. I just don’t understand how something like this could be happening to me.”

Then she remembered what her psychiatrist had said about how actually, most women who work the hardest and want children the most suffer with postpartum mood disorders. “None of this makes sense,” Janet realized as she laid in bed for yet another night of sleeplessness.

Blog Author: This blog author has asked to remain anonymous. All names in this story have been changed. I have two beautiful daughters. I had postpartum psychosis with my first daughter. I have had no postpartum mood disorders at all whatsoever with my second.

For those of you desperately reaching for hope, you will find it. This trial will become a blessing in your life, as it has mine. I am healed. What I have learned from this dark chapter in my life is that “this, too, shall pass.”

I have learned that like any of life’s trials, the only way to make it through is to have faith in our Savior, Jesus Christ. Faith that He will protect you. Faith that He will preserve your child. Faith that Jesus Christ Himself has felt what you are feeling in a way that allows Him to succor you. He is there. Even when you feel your prayers are bouncing off a cement ceiling, never leaving the ground. He is there. He is listening. He will guide you. He will direct you. He will protect you. He will protect your children and watch over them.

If you feel as I felt, unworthy and an enormous amount of guilt associated with the fact that you have this trial in your life, the truth is no matter how righteously you live your life, trials happen. No matter how much you love your child, trials happen. The purpose of life is not to avoid trails. The purpose of life is to let them refine you, as it has me.I am more patient. I am more kind. I am quick to forgive. I know that I have no control over what trials come into my life. I have turned my life over to Christ.

What I can promise you now is that as you put your trust in the Lord and when you feel those worrisome thoughts or unwanted anxiety, push it out of your mind and say, “Let God’s will be done, and His timing also. I don’t need to check if my daughter is breathing. I don’t need to worry she’ll fall out of the window. God Himself is watching over and protecting her. I do my best, and He makes up for the rest. All is well.”

The night before you were born, there was so much lightning. It wasn’t raining though, just hot – the hottest night of the year. Sitting on the big blue birth ball, rocking from side to side, I’d rest my head on the hospital bed during the in-between. When a contraction came, I’d sit up, open my eyes and watch the jagged stabs of light through the window as they punctuated the clear, distinct pain in my body.

Later, the white haze of high noon would blur the edges of the clouds. By then, nothing would be clear for me. The pain and the urge to push or not push and the exhaustion and the panic would all run into and over each other, a hot, foggy murk, and I would not know when or if or how you were coming, or what my body was doing, or if both or either of us would survive.

Everyone said it would be a snap. A breeze. A walk in the park. There will be nothing to it, they said. They said, he’ll slide right out. Nothing is like the first one, after that, it’s all downhill. Your body is ready, they said. Your body knows what to do. Your body will take over. You’ve been through it all already.

Everything they said should have been true; but nothing could have prepared me for birthing you.

I cannot say your birth tore me open. My body did not literally tear. Somehow, I managed to expand beyond my own capacity to accommodate not only your body, but also the hands and wrists and forearms of the midwife who reached inside to turn you and free your shoulder from the umbilical cord that had wrapped and twisted its way around you.

And yet, later, I needed to mend.

It’s hard to know what happened to me afterwards, where I went. I thought I knew how to have a baby – how to birth a baby and then how to mother an infant back at home. I’d done it before – I knew how.

But I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know how to handle you, the colic. Who could blame you for being so fussy! You had swallowed so much amniotic fluid, having descended into the birth canal, then waiting there for much longer than you should have. The fluid was in your ears and eyes and belly. You needed to recover from your own birth. You needed to be held all the time, and of course I wanted to hold you, but you have a brother too, and he also needed my love and attention.

It’s not like things ever got That Bad, really.  I was not incapable of joy, because I did laugh and love with you. I could never not get out of bed. I did not want to harm myself or others. I never fantasized about abandoning you or dropping you out of the upstairs window.  I said “no” to many of the criteria on the doctor’s checklist when I finally went, nine months later, to get some medication.

It was hard to describe, other than to say that I didn’t quite feel like myself. But then again, it was hard to know who my “self” was anymore. There was a dark heaviness, an anger and sadness and loneliness. There was a feeling that nothing was wrong, but everything was wrong.

I slept upstairs for months, on the guest futon in my office. I did not know how to be married. I had no space. I felt so empty and hollow and heavy, there was no way anyone could meet me where I was.

It was, and still is, vague and blurry and hard to understand.

Maybe I just needed time to breathe, to mend my overstretched ligaments and allow the holes in my psyche to close back up again, after experiencing what was beyond my comprehension, to replenish the reserves of energy and fortitude that had been used up in birthing you.

Maybe if I had been allowed to stay in the hospital for another day or so I would have been okay. Just some time to collect myself before heading back out into the world where so much would be asked of me.

Maybe it’s because I felt so inept.

Maybe it’s because the only ways I knew to love were suddenly limited by time, attention, and energy.

Maybe it’s because your birth was so difficult, but maybe it’s also because that type of difficulty is not recognized as trauma.

Maybe it’s because I wanted to tell my story – the story of your birth – over and over and over to make sense of it, to find a context, but once everyone knew the basic details – twenty hours of active labor, the cord around your shoulder, no c-section, nine pounds, two ounces, everyone’s fine – they had heard enough.

Maybe I had post-partum depression. Maybe I had a chemical imbalance.

Maybe I just needed help. Everyone had told me – two kids is more like ten kids, the workload increase is exponential, etc., etc. But no one ever said, you will not know how to handle it. You will not know how to love so much, so separately, at the same time, and this not knowing will tear you apart.

Maybe it was simply that I was an almost-forty-year-old woman who spent many long days alone with a toddler and an infant, and I could have used some time to myself.

Maybe it was nothing more than that.

My water broke first. That was a surprise. It hadn’t been that way the first time. Later, I was told that that there is much lore and myth around births where the water breaks before contractions have begun because, contrary to common portrayals on TV, this sequence of events is actually rare.

I had just gotten your brother into the bath and I bent down to kneel beside the tub and there it was, as if the bathwater had overflowed onto the floor. Of course I knew, but I still wanted to be sure. I waited. Soon, there were puddles of amniotic fluid all over the house. We called your grandparents to come for your brother. I stood on the front porch, waving until the car disappeared around the corner into the clear evening light. My heart ached, saying goodbye to an only son, bursting to welcome you.

Back home again when everything was over, I was nostalgic for the hospital. There was a hippie deli down the street, and I missed the tuna sandwich on thick, soft, grainy bread, with tomato and sprouts brought to me on my day of convalescence. I would miss the quiet, the solicitude, and that one night, alone with you, in the bed beside me, swaddled, nursing, as we figured out how to be together with you outside of me.

Afterwards, I wanted to do it again right away, which was crazy, given what I’d just been through. I thought it was the postpartum euphoria, the hormones and dizziness. But the feeling lasted.  I wanted a third. A girl. I felt myself clinging to the hope that I would go through it all again. I knew that if I was going to do it, it was going to have to be now, that I could not make the transition in and out of this space again. I needed to keep the momentum going.  As the months wore on, though, I knew I could not handle more. This was plenty. We were enough.

But first I had to be sad.

I had to be sad that I am not younger. I had to be sad that I didn’t do this sooner. I had to be sad that I’m someone who needs a lot of solitude in order to feel fully whole. I had to be sad that I will never have a daughter, a Violet or Ruby. I had to be sad that your birth marks an ending for me. I had to mourn the loss of possibility, that while it is still technically possible, it is not actually desirable, given our circumstances, our lives, to have more children. I had to actually say the words to myself, “No, I can’t handle more.” And then I had to be sad that I can’t handle more. I needed to be sad that this will be all, and I had to go through all of that to recognize that this is plenty. That you, I, we are enough.

Last time, I had birthed naturally, as I had wanted, but in a traditional hospital, with an O.B. With you, I was going to have a water birth. We had switched OB practices so that I could employ a midwife and use the Alternative Birthing Center and give birth in the giant bathtub. I could labor in water, which was said to be so relaxing and warm and peaceful. Floating took pressure off the joints and alleviated the affects of gravity and you would not be shocked by the sudden change from water to air and I could catch you myself as you slid out.

But the night you were born was the busiest of the year in the birthing wing. Someone said it was because of the lightning, the way it pierced the atmosphere which induced labor. The tub was not available. It’s rare that so many women are laboring at the same time that those who desire the tub suites cannot have them, but as I breathed through my contractions in the triage room, I was told that there was a chance we might not be able to have a water birth.

There was much confusion then, and conferring with various staff members. But I left that to the trusted others to handle, your father and godmother, who were with me in the hospital. I was busy, breathing, focusing, rocking, turning further and further inward in preparation for the work I would do later.

The lightning began to fade as the first signs of daylight appeared in the sky. There was a shift change for the staff, and once my regular midwife showed up, I knew we would be alright. She was taking charge of the situation and said that yes, we could get into the tub room because I had been there longer than the others. I only had to be dilated 5 cm before I could get into the room but that surely that would not be a problem because I had been there all night.

But when she checked, I was only at 2.5 cm, still. I didn’t know why it was taking so long, what was wrong, what I was doing wrong.

Even at this hospital, with all their alternative methods, there were still rules; they followed the standard hospital procedure which allowed no more than 24 hours to elapse between when one’s water breaks and when the baby is delivered. Without amniotic fluid, the theory goes, the baby has no protection from harmful germs and bacteria and is potentially exposed to danger of all kinds.

5 cm to get into the water, 24 hours without water.

5 cm to get into the water, 24 hours without water.

5 cm to get into the water, 24 hours without water.

Later, somehow, in the space between trying to return to normal and recognizing that my notion of normal had vaporized – during the time when I tried to show your brother how much I still loved him and how much attention I still had for him, how much I could still dance and romp and play and be silly, and how much it was okay for him to be mad at me for having a baby, and how it was okay for him to not want me to sit next to him, or tuck him into bed at night, all while trying to figure out what would make you happy, not the car nor the stroller nor the bassinet, only my arms, my breast – somewhere in there a part of myself became dormant, as if stunned into stillness. It felt as if nothing within me was growing, and I had shed all the life I had.

I was already a mother when I had you, so your birth was not the dramatic transformation into something else that had occurred the first time. One birth revealed to me how much I was capable of, was for me about capacity; the other illuminated my limitations, where branches can bend no further, the point of breakage. Both showed me to myself. Both were necessary for me to be whole. At the time I did not know that. At the time I did not recognize that anything was growing or alive, that deep underground, my roots were stretching, absorbing nutrients from the rich soil of my life, of our lives together.

By now I’m tired. I’ve been having steady contractions for fourteen hours already. The tub is open. We are moving. We parade down the hall, carrying pillows from home and clothes and bags and cups of coffee and cups of ice. I feel that I’ve earned this and here we are, the large room with the queen sized bed with the flowered spread and oak headboard. The tub. The tub is full of water and waiting for me, for us. Through the window I see the blue sky and white, puffy clouds. Late morning light. I sink into the tub. Getting close to transition now. The contractions are coming quick and hard and I am breathing and the water feels so good, I lay back, rest, so that only my face and the apex of my belly with its protruding navel are not submerged in water. And then I wait. And nothing happens. When a contraction comes, several minutes later, it is weak, and barely a moan escapes my body. I wait some more. It is afternoon now. We’re close to twenty hours now. I’ve gotten to 8 cm and now my contractions have stopped. I’ve reached transition and now I’m going backwards. I am closing back up.

Out of the tub and into the shower. Out of the shower and on to the bed. A walk down the hall. Nipple stimulation to get contractions going. We’ll try a breast pump. This works – the contractions are back and they are quick and hard and we are ready to go and they are in my back now. There is no water inside me and no cushion. I’m having back labor now and I’m on all fours on the bed and I have never had pain so deep and hot that it pushed me to the edge of consciousness. I do not know who I am. I do not know what I am.

Then back in the tub and do I feel pushy now?

I’m not sure; I can try to push but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to push anymore and it’s not time yet. It should be time, but it’s not time yet. We’re not ready yet. Back into the shower and down the hall and back and nipple stimulation and now I feel pushy. I want to push in the tub but that doesn’t work. We’ll try the bed and now the pain the pain the pain. On my back and I am screaming and I can’t take it. I can’t do it any more. I am done. The contractions are too much, it’s too fast now. It’s happening too fast and too slow and it’s not over yet and it should be and out the window is only white haze and my eyes are blurry. The room is flooded with light and I scream into the light it’s too much I’m pushing now. I’m pushing now. My body is on fire and you will be here now.

I am in and out of that place within me that I have never known before, that I will not remember afterwards, that place that allows my body to take over. That place that pushes me out of itself, that is myself. That is fluid. I will need this later. I will want this later. But my moments here are so fleeting I will not know how to come back and this is not a place to return to, only to bring back with me. But there is no time to come back here, like waking from a dream and wanting to remember it before the day begins.

I am pushing now for you to come but you do not come. You move down but then back up and something is wrong. It is not supposed to happen this way. It’s not supposed to be this way. I am to push and you are to emerge but you are not coming out. You have descended. You can’t stay there too long but you stay. Your head is moving now your head is out. Your skull your brain your mouth your eyes are here but now your body is stuck. We’re both stuck. There is nowhere to go because of where you are and where I am and I am done but you’re not out and there is nothing to do but scream and sob and push and breathe and pray and beg to be cut open but they cannot cut because your head is out and the only way out is through me. It’s not supposed to be this way, your body should slide right out now, but there is the cord. The cord is keeping you here, part of my body holding strong to your body, not letting you out and this is when we could die. Like a flash of lightning, I suddenly know, in my bones and skin and fluid and a new kind of scream, that something is very wrong, that you or I or both of us might not survive this. Darkness descends. But now there are the hands and wrists and forearms, reaching in and turning. I don’t know what is happening, only more pain but there you are now you’ve been turned and you’ll slide out now, and I’m pushing and just like that there you are. You’re out. You’re out now and I’m done. My shaking sobbing body is done.

You are quiet. There is no sound from you yet, not yet not yet and I am waiting for you still and I don’t know I don’t know if –

Here you are. You’re on me now, blue and slimy and crying too and mine. You’re here and you’re okay and we both made it we’re both alive and you’re out and both our hearts are beating and you’re fine and you’re here.

Oh my God – you’re here.

Blog Author: Christine Simokaitis. Christine Simokaitis received an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. Her work is published in Alligator Juniper, Natural Bridge, and in the anthologies Mourning Sickness and Are We Feeling Better Yet? She currently resides in Chicago, Illinois, with her husband and two young sons. She actively writes, teaches, and enjoys life. “Waiting for Elijah” appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of Calyx and is republished here with the author’s permission.