Cheryl was there. She had soothed my incisional and heart wounds before...during my pregnancy with Elianna when Dr. May relocated my pelvic uterus to its appropriate abdominal home and then again after my c-section at 22 1/2 weeks. The PACU is a funny little place. You can see and hear so much...you can make assumptions. The 75 year-old hysterectomy, the 38 year-old infertility patient after her D&E, the 24 year old with her newly c-sectioned babe, the 30 year old with empty arms...the NICU light years away; what a tragically odd little cornucopia of motherhood... . Cheryl navigates her PACU world beautifully. She has mothered me a handful of times now, nursed me, taken away my pain, wet my palate, held my hand...introduced me to my children.
And Kevin...shaken...to the roots of his husbandly soul, holding me, showing me that very first picture of our boy, our Silas. What a role to play - stretched between so many hearts and places: updating waiting rooms (permanent ones in hospitals; and the makeshift ones that our dearest friends set up around their kitchen tables, on their desks, in their vehicles), arranging safe and calm childcare for sweet Tahlia, holding our fresh from heaven child in his arms, introducing grandparents to their little guy, and navigating the flock of tear stained health care providers as they began telling the story.
Neither of us understood the gravity of what had happened until hours, maybe days, later as the details unfolded. From PACU, Cheryl wheeled me into the NICU. Lorie cried over me as we hugged. Charity laid my little boy on my chest...magical as I realized that a few yards behind me was the room where I had first felt Elias' warm skin against mine and a few yards to my left was the quiet corner where Elianna had taken her last breaths against my bare and broken heart. And now here was this child...this big, wiggly, angry-at-his-cpap, 6 pound, 5+ weeks early, precious soul wrapped in boy, baby. "He's a miracle..." they all said.
It was late afternoon before I was settled in my room. Kevin was still trekking back and forth between all of us who needed him so desperately...filling each of his roles with tenderness, seriousness, giddiness. Dr. May came into my room...
- The words she chose after Elias was born are etched in my mind..."Megen, I don't know what to say...I am, quite frankly, horrified." Horrified. That was the right word.
- Elianna died during the early morning hours after my c-section. Dr. May came to my room with a quietness. I don't know that she said anything using voice. She felt my empty belly. She touched my empty arms. "I am so desperately sorry, Megen." Desperate. That was the right word.
...and now, "Megen, he is beautiful. I can't believe it. Do you realize that he was way up under your ribs? He's a miracle." Again, the right word. Miracle.
And I don't mean to use that word lightly - miracle. I didn't know how right she was until I learned the whole story...until I understood how literally she meant "up under your ribs." But our Silas James was...is...a miracle. I was right, my uterus had ruptured, although Dr. May didn't know it for sure before she opened my tetanic (tEtanic...not tItanic...although...) abdomen. The on-call OB that I had screamed my history to had, by God's gracious design, had more time to think through what was happening than Dr. May and had bluntly told Dr. May to cut me top to bottom instead of side-to-side ( a choice that would prove to have been absolutely necessary). Charity and Stacey had known it was me that they were waiting for an hour earlier and had gone to the OR without any prompting once they'd heard the overhead page for Dr. May to go to the OR stat. Lorie had tagged along as an extra set of hands without realizing it was me. They had readied the baby bed and then waited. I'm told the OR was silent. And then the only words that suited..."Oh shit" from Dr. May. She had opened my abdomen to find an empty, tiny, torn open uterus...and no baby. He was, in fact, up under my ribs, free-floating in my middle, cord and placenta attached to him but not to the life-sustaining wall of a healthy uterus. Dr. May told me later that she had thought, "God, no. Not again. Not this family. Not another dead baby. No." And whether she intended those thoughts to be prayerful or not, we know now that HE ANSWERED.
Silas James was born at 1230 on September 30th. He cried soon after arriving on the baby warmer via the hands of precious friends, despite the complete havoc my body had wreaked on his. His heart never stopped beating. He was a purpley-pale and furious about it. He did wonderfully. He was off Cpap in 24 hours. He was nursing a couple days later. He was out of his incubator before he turned a week old. And 11 days after our miracle, we came home...with beauty instead of ashes.I'm no artist, but my precious and tender friend Carolanne had given me a set of oil pastels and a sketch book after Elias died. One day maybe I'll have a real artist turn them into actual pieces...Michelle, one day friend. Through the medium of pastels, I have often depicted my womb as a grave, tomb-like instead of life-giving. I've also wrestled with the battle between angels and darkness that I believe have raged around my family, my babies. And so I imagine my insides on the day Silas was born...womb turned tomb-like, darkness overtaking the protection of angels' wings, and then intercession. Christ Himself, perhaps, going to His Father, our Father, perhaps tearful, certainly carrying the burden of my desperation: "Father, not again. Please. Protect. Save. Let Me Redeem."
"And she knows, more and more, the brightness of a new day when the world is glimpsed as from a tomb, its stone rolled away." - Mark Buchanan
He calmed the storm to a whisper and stilled the waves. What a blessing was that stillness as He brought them safely into harbor! Psalm 107:29-30
