{YML Voices} The Weight Of True Love

 

by Elena Lozano (http://newmamasguide.tumblr.com/)

“Is this life threatening…I mean, will she be ok?”

The words caught in my throat and my heart beat so painfully sharp in my chest, as I felt my knees go weak and the bile rise in my throat. I waited for the doctor’s response.

These 10 seconds seemed longer than the 24 years I had lived up to this point as I watched 3 doctors and 4 nurses surround my 2 day old daughter shaking her limbs to get her to cry as they held an oxygen mask over her tiny mouth.

The doctor put his hand on my shoulder and responded, “We don’t know right now.”

I felt as if a vacuum sucked all the air out of my lungs at once, and an agony heavier then the weight of the world fell upon me and I tried so hard not to fall to my knees. My vision blurred in the fluorescent lights of the ER, and I had never felt such fear. Fear that cannot be described in words, the fear that the most precious gift ever bestowed upon me could be taken away so quickly. In this moment I realized that nothing had ever mattered more to me, never had I loved anyone or anything so much, not even myself, and that if anything were to happen to this precious little person I had carried inside of me, I would no longer have a reason to live. To name a defining moment of motherhood is a difficult task. I have found that day to day as my now healthy child thrives, that something monumental happens so often as they grow, if you look closely. However, for me…to almost lose her, was the moment in which I found the sheer strength of motherhood I had not known I had.

I loved her from the moment I took a pregnancy test and knew she existed, and my love for her grows exponentially from day to day. Each day I think I love her so much I could not love her more, yet somehow every day I wake up, the love has grown tenfold. My defining moment of motherhood is somewhat moveable, as it seems to evolve and change with each new milestone. As I sweated in pain and fear through my 24 hour labor, I thought perhaps that was the moment. Then they placed her in my arms and the pain from the hour of stitches seemed to evaporate while I looked into her beautiful gray eyes. I thought surely, this is was the moment. My definition of love became something bigger then I knew it could be. That I would do anything for her, my life was no longer mine.

My hefty 8 lb 8 oz baby was so healthy and strong when we went home from the hospital, that what happened on her second day of life came as a shockwave to my universe. I was nursing her in peace, enjoying the moment that I had waited 40 weeks for, despite the desperate fatigue. We were gazing into each other’s eyes, when all of a sudden she faded. Her eyes went shut, she unlatched from my chest and her little body went limp. I stood up, screaming for help as I realized she wasn’t breathing.

Her tiny fingers uncurled and her arms and legs fell limp in my arms, no matter how loud I yelled or tried to rouse her I could not get a response. My mother takes her from me in panic and tries desperately to awaken her as I call 911. I talk to the dispatcher through my sobs as I fall onto my knees because no one can wake her and bring back her breathing. I cry, “The fire station is up the street…why are they not here!” As her face is turning gray, I hear sirens and run out the front door to guide them in praying that it is not too late. Finally her little eyes open as we strap her into her car seat to transport her in the ambulance back to the hospital. The chaos that emerged in the following hours has shaped me in many ways. My daughter had been dehydrated, and an underdeveloped suck/swallow reflex as she nursed, lead to her apnea. As the children’s hospital emergency team arrived at the Scripps ER to transport her to Children’s Hospital, I tried my best to hold it together.

Before the children’s hospital emergency response team transported her to the children’s hospital NICU, they invited me to the bedside to try to calm her tears. I knelt down to her level and touched her soft face. As she looked into my eyes and heard my voice she quieted and seemed calm at the sound of my voice. I kissed her cheek and made the sign of the cross on her forehead, not knowing what I would face. My husband, my parents and I piled into the car not saying a word to follow the ambulance from Scripps hospital to Children’s, where we would meet her. This was the longest car ride of my life.

She consequently stayed at the NICU for a week to make sure this wasn’t an issue with her lungs, and to make sure it wasn’t a seizure. Despite my fourth degree tear from childbirth, hell or high water could not keep me from the long lonely walk through Children’s Hospital to the unit. I stayed there as long as I could, day in and day out holding my precious angel I thought I had lost. I could not leave there without tears, because my baby was not home with me. I waddled my way through the dim hallways and grimaced through my pain knowing at the end of that walk was my child. I think, in many ways that is somewhat of a metaphor for what motherhood really is. Walking through the unknown, stifling your own pain and stress, for the good of your child. To keep it together on the surface while inside you are falling apart, because you know…if you fall apart, so does your baby. I had not realized the strength I had inside of me, to carry on through my darkest hours until I had given birth to her. Motherhood has many joyous days, and many hard days, but to somehow try your hardest to make every day the best it can be for your child, no matter what you face, is true motherhood, and true love.

As my daughter grows, and I grow with her, I realize how many defining moments of motherhood there truly are. The day she called me mama for the first time my heart swelled so big I thought it would burst from my chest. The day she crawled, the day she took her first step…so many beautiful things happen as they grow. However, for me, to almost have lost my child and realize there was not a single thing on earth, not fire, not snow, not miles or mountains, that could stop me from getting to her. I would swim the length of the oceans, find a way to climb to the moon if I needed to, because she is my life. To realize that my life mattered only because it meant that as long as I lived I would be there, to love her, protect her, to help her grow and learn and thrive. Her life, is my life. To me, this is motherhood.