At the end of a movie my son was watching there was a montage of nurses from the 1960’s wheeling newborns two-by-two through a hospital maternity ward. The sight of those babies in those bassinets made my heart skip a beat.
(This post is mostly about the fear and vulnerability of being a new mother of twins. My youngest was easy, and I was experienced when he was born. I was alone with him in the hospital and held him every second while my husband was home with the twins. He was just my buddy, and it all made sense).
Nothing made sense when my twins were born. Even now the memories come to me in flashes. I was swaddled up from surgery and loopy on pain medication. A blood vessel in my nose had burst, so my nose was bandaged (along with every other orifice), so I was like a big dumb swollen pustule.
My husband had left (with my blessing) to make the announcement at his cousin’s party that he was a new father, so I was alone. The nurses wheeled these little babies into my room and parked their bassinets just out of my reach.
“Now, no getting out of bed,” the nurse warned me. “If they cry, push the buzzer. We don’t want you ripping stitches and bleeding all over the floor.”
No getting out of bed? Leaving them out of my reach? What did she expect to happen? The second she left, they started squealing. Not crying, just mewing. For me. Their mother. They were hungry. I had to feed them. But I couldn’t reach them. But I had to reach them! I had to protect them, get to them, they were too far away! I couldn’t hold both of them at the same time, what should I do??
I think a word needs to be invented to describe this maternal emotion. Panic, maybe. Not fear, but closer to terror. Not just protectiveness, but closer to abject vigilance. Not just love, but closer to reverence.
Of course I got out of bed. I never listen. I heaved my post-birth girth out of that bed, and step-by-step, made my way to those bassinets. I remember looking into each bassinet and offering one hand to each of them. And that is where I stood, just gazing at them and holding their fingers as they looked up at me. I don’t know how long I stood there, but long enough to bleed all over the floor. Profusely. I didn’t even notice.
(Ew. I’m sorry)
I got in trouble. I got in so much trouble, with everyone, especially the charge nurse, who had to clean the floor.
“Didn’t I ask you to just push the button? I would have helped you. You can’t be any use to them if you don’t heal.”
I heard her speak, but I didn’t understand. Help me? Help me do what? It was like I was in some kind of trance, this love-fueled angst, that I couldn’t wake up from. I watched her handling them, confidently, and I wanted to tell her not to touch them. But I also had to admit that when she was done cleaning them and swaddling them, they always looked happy and content.
I hated when she would take them out of the room. I paced the floor, stared out the window, wild with worry that she wouldn’t bring them back, but also secretly relieved that someone experienced was tending to them. When she would wheel them back into the room and place them near my bed, I would look down at them and they would be staring up at me with these big eyes. Their faces would be clean, and they would be dressed in new onesies and swaddled in clean blankets. Their brand-new little baby hair would be wet and brushed to the side, and something about them just broke my heart.
I still don’t know why. But the sight of them being returned to me clean and calm was the first time I realized that I had to entrust them to the world. That I could entrust them to the world. And that they would come back. Obviously things had happened to them outside my hospital room, things I was not privy to. They were wearing different clothes, and they had their hair brushed a different way. But those things had brought them back. Even at a day old, they had undergone changes that didn’t involve me.
That was the scary part.
In our house, we still call it “baby hair,” and I still have all three of the boys’ baby hairbrushes. Once in a while they will brush their wet hair neatly to the side and then proudly show me.
“Mom, look. Baby hair.”
Kills me every time.