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I remember asking, “Do you hear a heartbeat?”
Three months earlier I lay in the same room with the same technician. My first ultrasound revealed nothing, as if a baby was never there.
This time she said, “I hear two heartbeats.” I cried. I was a mother. Matt cried too – but for very different reasons. And he lovingly said, “We’re done.”
Last night Jonah cried for more than an hour after I put him to bed. I would open the door and he would be standing, gripping the crib rail, which is spattered with chipped paint from his bite marks. He was standing there, looking at the closed door, waiting for me. Hoping I would come in to hold him, save him, love him. I pick him up and hold him against my chest in the rocking chair. He rests his cheek on my bare shoulder, and we are skin to skin. The nightlight reveals his wet face from all the tears. I cradle him in my arms and keep rocking. And tell him I love him.
I have a soft spot for Jonah because we left him.
Jonah and Riley were born five weeks early. Jonah weighed 4 pounds, 12 ounces; Riley 4 pounds, 6 ounces. Despite a relatively decent term and weight for twins, they were taken to the ICU. They needed feeding tubes because they couldn’t suck on their own and instruments to regulate their temperature because they couldn’t do that on their own either.
Riley progressed faster than Jonah and she was ready to come home seven days later. I didn’t want her to come home, not without her brother. For months they lay touching, inseparable. Moving inside my womb, listening to my voice and heartbeat, listening to each other’s heartbeat. Sharing oxygen and blood and life. I asked if we could keep them together. We could not. So we left him.
This was the first time I knew what it meant to be a mother. I cried. Jonah, who knew nothing and no one in this world, was alone. Once inseparable from me, now abandoned in a strange place. I told Matt to go to the hospital and sit with him so he knows we are there. So he knows we are going to bring him home too – and we did.
The first hours of motherhood:
“Her blood pressure is high.” I can hear the nurse on the phone outside my door.
Of course it’s high. I have 54 extra pounds on my chest cutting off oxygen, my hands and feet are swollen, and the pad on this makeshift bed keeps sliding down until my head is where my thighs should be. I have to wait eight hours before my C-section because Mr. Anesthesiologist is concerned about me upchucking a piece of cheese and a crumb of toast I ate this morning.
I’m lying on my back looking into the bright white above, my arms outstretched, and Matt by my side holding my hand. Does he feel me shaking? There are two surgeons, five nurses and Mr. Anesthesiologist. Matt is dressed in scrubs. He’s wearing a surgical mask and cap. He looks handsome and completely ridiculous. I’m trying to move my legs. I can’t. I start to panic. The epidural has kicked in. But I’m trying desperately to move. Calm down. Breathe. Oh God, please let this all be ok.
It seems like forever before the nurses in the background begin to move. Riley was born at 5:27 p.m., Jonah two minutes later. My eyes tear up. Are they crying? Are they both crying? I can’t see anything. It’s a blur of calm voices, Matt holding one baby, and a glimpse of her face. Very quickly the room becomes quiet.
Mr. Anesthesiologist asks my husband what he does. Matt sells grass. Synthetic lawn to be exact. Apparently, putting my insides back together is going well because Mr. Anesthesiologist has time to Google SynLawn in the operating room. “What do you recommend?”
“We just got in this new stuff. SynBlue 22. Give me a call. I’ll personally put a quote together for you.”
Really.
I’m wheeled into Recovery, which looks more like a storage room. What do they look like? Are they ok? When can I see them? When can I feel my legs? Why does this machine keep beeping? My nurse is relieved by a lady who works as a filing clerk because the hospital is under staffed. Apparently, it was a popular night for deliveries. So, maybe this is a storage room.
“Why can’t my family come in to see me yet?” I ask.
“Your blood pressure is high.”
Huh. Shocker.
I have to pass gas before I can eat. I have to walk before I can see my babies. I have to pee before I can leave. Those are the rules.
Matt brings me pictures. They both have dimpled chins like their Daddy. They are so tiny – knocked knees and scrawny arms. Matt says they are doing well. God is good. I try to say that every day.
In the morning Matt and I walk down to the ICU. There is a key pad, a security camera, and what looks like a thick, steel-plated vault door. A woman asks for the secret code. The secret code. There I was, hunched over from a 5-inch incision in my abdomen, dressed in pajamas, holding a plastic container of breast milk, and she wants a code to prove I’m Jonah and Riley’s mother. It gets better. Matt recites both codes (one for each baby) and she says one doesn’t match. What the?
Riley screamed when I put clothes on her, the nurse said. She inhales my milk from a bottle. She sucks her thumb with her long fingers outstretched over her entire face. She shuts her eyes and puckers her lips as if to plant a big, wet kiss on my cheek.
Jonah looks just like his Daddy – the dimpled chin, nose, round face, side burns and long fingers to grip a Rugby ball. And he loves to be held. He is wide-eyed and active in Matt’s arms. I show off my “football hold” as he rests on my arm just between my wrist and elbow.
I’m waiting in my room to be discharged. There’s another rule that says I can only leave by wheel chair pushed by a medical escort. A woman appears in the doorway. She swoops in with her mop and bucket and slathers the floor with soapy water. “Be careful,” she says. Be careful. It’s a whole floor of pregnant women, women hunched over in pain from C-sections, and little old grandmas carrying flowers in vases they bought downstairs in the gift shop. I almost die laughing. Seriously, I’m laughing so hard it hurts, which somewhat concerns me since I learned the incision is being held together by super glue, well, medical super glue. I leave the hospital in a wheel chair holding the bag I brought with me two days ago.
Our house is empty. I am a mother, but there is no one here to make it real. Not yet.
This Mother’s Day morning Jonah lay on my stomach and Riley curled up into a ball at my side with her cheek pressed against my chest. I imagine she can hear my heartbeat. And for a moment, we are all inseparable.
God is good.
