Mila's birth story.

I would like to start with her birth story.  That was the trauma that sent me down this path in the first place.

(I'm new to this.  Am I supposed to issue a trigger warning?  This is a story about stillbirth.  Here is a big, fat trigger warning.)

On a Sunday night, I was lying on the couch watching TV and felt her make a huge, huge movement.  I went to bed.  D and I woke up the next morning for a routine antenatal testing appointment on a Monday at 7:45AM.  Perhaps I’ll tell the story of that appointment in detail later, but for now it’s enough to know that after countless normal ultrasounds, so many that they almost became boring - that morning there was no longer a wriggling baby on screen, annoyed by all the commotion, with all her hair floating about in her bubble and her little fat rolls shifting as she moved and her clear, strong heartbeat.  With no warning, no sign, no whisper of what was coming, there was no heartbeat.  I was immediately walked across the street to L&D, the diagnosis (intrauterine fetal demise) was confirmed, and this is where her birth story begins.

I was induced.  We called our families.  I cried.  D cried.  We alternated crying and comforting each other.  We waited.  We watched sports to pass the time, because it would be emotionally neutral.  We got bored.  We missed her.  The hospital bed inflated and deflated on its own in inexplicable ways. The nurses wanted to know if she had a name, and I was too overcome to say it aloud.  Two hours later, my water broke.

Actually, this is where her birth story begins.  The contractions started small, and quickly became distracting.  I lay on my side and tried to concentrate.  I asked for drugs.  They didn’t help; I felt everything.  I asked for more, different drugs.  Those helped, a lot.  I went to sleep.  D left to walk our first-responder relatives to the garage, expecting that I would be a while.  By the time he returned ten minutes later, there was a doctor in my room telling him I was fully dilated.  Then I birthed our Mila.

I birthed her in under 10 hours from the time I was induced.  I birthed her without Pitocin.  I birthed her in a handful of efficient pushes.  I birthed her without yelling.  I birthed her without tearing.  I birthed her with the unstoppable knowledge that she would be dead.  I birthed her with my eyes wide open, and looked unflinchingly on her still face and limp body.  I birthed her and wanted, unreservedly, to look at her and hold her to my chest for the entire long, dark night.  I didn’t ever ask for or want this distinction, but I birthed her like this, like a fucking hero.

Is this not the worst thing that can happen to a woman?

I reached out for her body, and our nurse placed her in my arms.  Was this my baby?  I was so happy to finally see her.  I was so sad that she couldn’t see me.  D and I both cried over her for a long time.

After the first wave of shock and sadness, I wanted to see all her bits.  I wanted to drink her up with my eyes.  I wanted to see and know everything about her physical form, which had been a matter of so much happy mystery to me for the last 37 weeks, with the limited time I had with her.  With a corner of her blanket, I wiped some of the goo and a few of my own tears off her face.  Her hospital hat didn’t fit quite right, so I tried to fix it.  I unfurled her, since she could not do it herself - unfolding her bottom lip, unrolling her bunched-up earlobe, untangling her limbs.

She did not look like a live sleeping baby.  There was no pink flush to her skin.  Her fingernails were a bruised blue and her lips were a very, very dark red.  Inside her mouth, her tongue was the same color, and her lips made a soft popping sound as they parted and closed again.

Is this not the worst thing that a woman can see?

But she was still beautiful to me.  I’m not sure if she looked like me, but her dad tells me that she did.  Her closed eyes like mine, her ears like D’s, her button nose of uncertain provenance.  A head of soft dark hair, the finest hairs I’d ever seen.  A roll of chub for a neck.  A sucking blister on her right hand, a little hand that was shaped like mine.  The shape and heft of her blanketed butt fit in my hand exactly the same way it had when it was just a mysterious lump bulging asymmetrically from my belly.  Remembering the shadow of a big, skinny foot we’d seen in her 30-week ultrasound, I fished it out and held it up for me, D, and all to see.  It was the first time I laughed that day.  It was a perfect miniature of D’s foot, huge on her little body and so cute.

Our nurse took her for a bath.  I asked her to dress Mila in some of her own clothes, which I'd had brought from our house: a pink hoodie with a little heart embroidered over the left chest, and a cream-colored footed one-piece printed with pink florals.  Her hoodie was too big, but looked very sweet. The rest of the night, I laid her belly-down on my chest with her little head nestled under the left side of my chin.  Her body grew cold against my cheek, so I nonsensically tucked her little pink hood closer around her face.  I worried that her face was smushed into my chest, so I nonsensically turned her head and checked that her nose and mouth were clear to breathe.  I fished her little hand out from the swaddling blankets and held it in mine with all five of her fingers wrapped around my thumb while we slept.  I smelled her head, which smelled a bit of iron and blood, and traced the overlapping edges of her skull plates with my finger.  We stroked her soft cheeks and whispered to her that we both loved her, would always love her, and would always be her mom and dad.

I stopped short of opening her eyes - I wanted to just let her sleep.  My guess is that they were the same color as mine, but I don’t know.