Rude Awakening

"How ya feeling mama?"

This was the first thing I heard after the anesthesia wore off and that worried me. Where’s my baby? I heard no signs what so ever of a baby being in the room. I struggled to sit up and look around the room only to find that he wasn’t there. After months of judgement, dirty looks, and mistreatment I STILL didn’t have my baby. What was it for? All the strength I showed and loneliness I put up with in hopes of feeling whole again once I got to hold my baby seemed to be in vain. I had hoped that once he came into the world all the hurt would go away but didn’t. This was the start of a 72 hour period of immediate depression. I couldn’t eat and sleep was all I could think of. The more I slept the more numb I became. I was the first to call the NICU each morning and the last to hang up at night. I was desperate to see him. To hold him. To feel him.

These next few days were wrapped up in anger and resentment. Why was this happening to me? Why did this KEEP happening to me? Why did pain and suffering never seem to want to leave my side. Why didn’t hurt have any mercy on me? Why was I the only one reaping the consequences of actions I didn’t make alone. Sure you called to check in but all I could think about was how you left us to endure such complications without you. How my baby was left alone with no parents. No one to visit him while each and every other child got to experience the warmth of a loved one. How skin to skin was a myth to him and the only voices he heard were ones of doctors and nurses. I counted each and every second leading up to the moment I met you Carter and when I did, it all made sense. I now understood the purpose behind it all. You are the most incredible “why" I had ever been blessed with. As cliche as it sounds, you saved me. You gave me life. You were my awakening.

Woke,

Daph the Mother