Resilience
I thought my infertility was the hardest part of my journey to motherhood. Turns out: my tolerance for grief and ever changing rules and restrictions during those three years I yearned for my sweet child was just practice for what was to come.
In November 2019, I received my first and only positive pregnancy test after years of trying to conceive. Unlike most women who struggle with infertility, I felt confident that this was my baby and I had no fear for its health or safety. So confident that when I started to feel cramping at 19 weeks, I thought - this is just dehydration, I’m just tired. I’ll have some water and rest.
I was wrong. My cervix had shortened to a mere 12mm and was beginning to open. March 2020 I received a cerclage (a stitch to close my cervix) and was sent home on a hope and prayer that I stayed pregnant until 28 weeks. There was also something else going on in the world at that time - perhaps you’ve heard of it? COVID-19. This meant almost all my appointments moved to virtual and I was suddenly alone with the grief that this sweet baby we had fallen in love with may not make it. My husband and I would alternate who was “the strong one” because the burden for both of us to be strong at the same time or collapse at the same time was far too great.
Mother’s Day 2020 was a joy-filled day. It was the day that my pregnancy reached 28 weeks. I remember the deep sigh of relief we both took on that day. We made it. Our baby was safe. The next day I was out for a walk when my water broke. I was one of the few women who didn’t go into immediate labor after their water breaks, in fact, it took 4 days for contractions to begin. So we were prepared. Our mantra? “Wherever she is safest.”
As our small yet healthy and vibrant baby was pulled from me in the operating room, little did we know that was the last time that we would be together as a family for more than 3 weeks. May 2020 was a weird time to have a baby in general, it was an excruciatingly challenging time to have a baby in the NICU. After getting some rest in my hospital room, my husband and I were ready to meet our daughter together. He wheeled me to the NICU and we were denied entry. Only one of us could go at a time.
This rule became stricter once I was discharged from the hospital: only one of us could see her for 7 days straight. As I had just had a C-section and the NICU was on the 8th floor of the hospital, there was no way I could make my way to her NICU suite independently and it was against current policy to have a chaperone take me to her room. Which meant, when I left the hospital on Tuesday, May 19th I did not see my child again until the following Tuesday. I cannot recall a time in my life where I have sobbed the way I did when I left the hospital that day. My c-section stitches throbbed but it was nothing in comparison to the pain that I felt in my heart, leaving my sweet baby behind. She was supposed to go home with me. This was not the way it was supposed to be.
After 7 weeks in the NICU, our daughter was discharged on July 4th, 2020. We now celebrate it as hospital independence day. Today when I share her early birth story, people are amazed. My vibrant, joy-filled, and witty daughter towers over her peers in preschool and has not had any medical complications due to her premature birth. While our birth story is different than I ever imagined, I’m grateful for the life I was able to bring into the world and her ability to show me what resiliency really means.
~Jess Milanes