you were born the day you were due -
Easter Sunday morning.
Not that you didn’t put me through the ringer
for two days prior
just to prove a point.
I’ve been told that, like your wedding day
you never remember
your labor
the way it actually happened,
but I do. I know
the way it happened to me,
even though my eyes were closed
so I couldn’t see
the way it happened to others.
Strangely, birthing the baby
wasn’t the hard part.
Twenty four hours
to try to start labor.
Twenty seven hours in it.
We finally went to the hospital -
they put me in a wheelchair,
took the express lane to Labor and Delivery.
I remember when my tailbone exploded.
It still hasn’t healed.
But that wasn’t the hard part.
The hard part was when they cut your cord -
cut your oxygen supply,
cut the lifeline between us
and took you away to resuscitate you.
The hard part was when
Daddy sang you to life
while I lay helpless on the other side of the room
not even knowing whether you were a boy or a girl,
let alone whether you would live.
The hard part was when they gave you to me
and then took you away again
and I couldn’t stop them.
They wouldn’t let me follow you.
They said, your placenta hasn’t been delivered,
we need to find an OB with small hands
to scrape it out.
She reached inside my shrinking uterus
and tore out our ravaged placenta -
that valiant and incredible organ
that sustained you,
ripped from me and shoved
unceremoniously into an orange biohazard bag.
They shot me full of all the drugs
I never wanted to take,
so easy with the IV already in my arm.
They said, your baby is fine,
you’re the one we need to monitor.
Too many complications.
After they took you away
I didn’t have anything left in me
to fight them.
So I grieved and raged in turn,
in silence.
The hard part is
I still do.
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