Baby Footprints

Scott and I decline to see the baby’s body. I accept a card with baby’s footprints on it, and immediately regret it. They’re so tiny, but perfect at the same time. Ten little toes, my dead baby girl’s toes. It’s too sad.

24 hours pass – friends and family visit – I look and feel drugged, but I’m not in any physical pain. I still can’t allow myself to feel emotions – my lungs have enough to do to take in adequate oxygen just laying still, crying would kill me, I’m sure. I smile at people, who probably think I’m not completely wrecked inside, and maybe don’t understand that I can’t cry until they take me off this damn magnesium drip.

24 hours, then they take out the IV, the catheter, and I get to eat, drink, stumble to the bathroom with help, and shower sitting down. Finally, I’m alone, and finally I can cry. I sob as quietly as I can in the shower, so no one interrupts me. I want to cry forever, I feel like I will cry forever, how could I ever stop?

Of course, I do stop eventually, and I get my stuff ready and Scott takes me home. I leave the hospital, with an empty belly and no baby in my arms. It’s not fair.

The first day home, I can barely walk up the stairs. I go one stair at a time, like an elderly lady. A week of bedrest and two days of muscle relaxers being pumped into my veins have left me weak, and with slightly atrophied muscles. I walk as much as I can, trying to build up muscle. I cry as much as I can, relieved to have an outlet for my pain. I talk to Scott, which helps immensely. We are closer than ever.

My breasts swell up, become rock hard as they fill with milk. I buy a size D bra (I was an A/B before I got pregnant). I cry with the pain of my swollen breasts, but I cry more when I try to relieve the pain by expressing some milk by hand. Milk that should be feeding my baby, being wasted into a wad a toilet paper, or dripping into my bra. I try cabbage leaves, drinking sage tea, and taking lukewarm showers. Within a week the swelling goes down, but I still leak milk. Useless milk, feeding no one.