Birth Trauma

I still live it.  Her fingers were spindly long, trimmed with paper thin crumbly fingernails.   Her skin had that pink, crisco crinkle drying in her new, brightly lit air womb of the world.  I was in love with her and breathed in the musty muck of motherhood scent she and I both held.  I cradled her easily with my left arm as she lay on my swollen belly–on the outside now–aware that we are two, no longer one.

Somewhere after that first feeding, with Melanie quietly tucked in her plastic cradle, I had the urge to go and the nurse accommodated me with a bed pan.  I never needed the bed pan with my first two children.  Legs still numb from the epidurals, I was still able to slither off the bed and make it to the bathroom where a nurse would hold up a plastic container requesting some “liquid output” so she could record my recovery progress.   I always made it. 

Not this time.  Something was different right away.  Something was different since it took my ob/gyn almost an hour the day before to sew me back together.   I remember wondering in a dizzy post birth fog as the epidural wearoff and sheer exhaustion and overwhelming emotions took over, was something wrong with my body?  It was the beginning of a seven-year journey to heal.