About After Birth:

A severe medical event challenged everything I knew about myself. I was sent down a road of self-discovery. It allowed me to see the world through the lens of a mother living with a disability.

Far beyond a pivot, this new trajectory added much more to my life than it took away.

After Birth is my story, told in parts because it’s A LOT.

1.

I feel guilty that I get sad on my son’s birthday. Every year around this time, my brain tells my nervous system to prepare for the worst, that something big is about to happen. I become forgetful and moody, and my skin vibrates (weird, I know). My mind goes into a dream-like state I call my “hyper-reality.”

When my son was small, I put all my energy into fighting the Anniversary Effect1: big celebrations, ridiculous birthday cakes, and broad smiles. I didn’t want my dark cloud to burst open on his birthday. He’s fourteen this year, and we have talked about how I feel and why. I think it’s important to model that we can feel shit and get through it.

This year, we ate store-bought birthday cake full of E numbers for breakfast. We hung out in my bedroom, the cosiest in the flat, with its pacifying sea-grey walls, grounding burnt orange velvet curtains, and soft linens on my king-size bed. With his neck craned and fully engrossed in his new game console, he leaned into me and rested his head on my arm. This is a rare occurrence. At this age, it’s all or nothing. He either wants nothing to do with me, or he’s a sweet baby boy. The former is the norm.

While he snuggled up, I observed him intently: his big, curly brown hair, long furry legs, and big teenage feet. They looked huge compared to his little footprints framed on my wall. The emotions had been welling up for days, and now they were ready to overflow.

"You know, there was a time when I thought I wouldn’t be here to see you grow up," I said. “I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud to be your mum."

"O….kay…I'm in a game." He replied. His response didn’t surprise or hurt me.

This moment stood still. Here we both were—he now at 14 and me at 52. It was a point of ingress that grounded me in Now. I was here with my son, and we were both alive.

When I was 38 years old, I was the happiest I’d ever been. I was married to a man I loved, and we lived in a luxury apartment on a small island in SWANA2. I was pregnant and perfectly healthy. I even did yoga until I was eight months pregnant. I ate good food —well, my cravings were peaches and Cheerios, which I ate by the bucket load. Never mind that I went into labour at the condiments bar in Fuddruckers!

It was a natural birth. This was not by design. However, I was only in labour for 2 hours. By the time the doctor came into the hospital and checked my dilation, I was at 10 cm, and there was no time for pain relief. When my son was born, I said, “It’s over already?” I had prepared for hours of agony.

My son was born without complications. He was healthy and beautiful. I was in awe of the person I had one-sided conversations with—the person who delivered post-yoga flutters and leg-stretching kicks, often communicating his aversion to my love for spicy food. I was in love with the owner of the tiny feet that used to be inside me, stretching my skin. But was now outside me wearing itty-bitty socks.

Ten days after he was born, during a nighttime feed in his dimly lit nursery, I woke up in the rocking chair to a scream coded to my DNA. I opened my eyes, not realising they had been closed. I couldn’t believe what I saw: my son dangling towards the ceramic floor as I held him by his ankle with my right hand.

My mind spun in guilty confusion while he screamed like a squawking seagull. My heart was racing and leaden, like wheels spinning in mud. My head was hanging towards my drooping left shoulder. After straightening my neck, I tried to follow through by pulling my torso to the centre, but I struggled to get myself to upright.

Then, I got an overwhelming urge to empty my bowels. I rose up, took two steps towards the cot, and placed him on his back. I whispered, "I'm sorry, baby!" as I walked out of the nursery and across the dark hall to the bathroom.

One thought dizzied me: I almost killed my baby.

The air conditioning caused the bare skin on my arms and legs to rise in defence as I pulled my underwear down and sat on the toilet. Then, as if someone had thrown an anchor into the sea with me attached, I slid off the toilet and slammed onto the tiles.

On impact, my bowels emptied. Although no one witnessed it, I felt a warm tinge of embarrassment. I sat up, grabbed toilet paper, picked up each pebble of faeces one by one, and threw them in the commode. I took my time and ensured I got every piece off the floor. I had been shocked into autopilot. I was acting more than thinking.

I tried to get off the floor, but I didn’t have the strength. I slithered on the tiles towards my bedroom, where my husband was sleeping. My underwear was still around my ankles, and my t-shirt scrunched and stretched underneath me. The friction of movement combated the nipping cold of the tiles.

Time had no bearing. Pulling myself down the dark hallway could have taken minutes or an hour. I stopped at the edge of the bed and called my husband’s name. He was startled awake, looking aimlessly in the dark. He turned on the bedside lamp, put his glasses on and found me sitting on the floor, legs akimbo like a rag doll. His face was a landscape of puzzlement.

"What are you doing on the floor?" He said.

"I'm so tired-"  

He instantly jumped out of bed, picked me up and put me on the mattress, pulling the duvet cover up to my neck.

"The baby," I whispered.

"I'll get the baby”, he said, “You just go to sleep."

A few hours later, I woke up and walked into the sun-drenched living room. My husband was on the sofa, vibrating his legs softly, and the baby was falling asleep on his lap.

“Y’alright?” he said.

“Look at my arm!” With my right hand I lifted my left arm and let go. It fell with no resistance. I staggered to a two-seater sofa across from him and slumped to my left. I watched his face morph from concerned to mortified.

"I think you're having a stroke!" He said.

"I can't be having a stroke. I just had a baby." I started to laugh, lifting and dropping my left arm in some spell of lunacy.

“Stop it. You’re freaking me out!” He put the baby in the bassinet.

“I’ll be right back!” He panicked and left the apartment.

We didn’t know the neighbours, even though we lived next door to them for about seven months. My husband complained about the volume of their television but they seemed nice.

He came back with the lady and told her to look after us, then rushed out again. She sat beside me, put her arms around me and started to rock me gently repeating, “Theek hai. Theek hai. Alright. Alright.”

I went limp in her arms. My face was buried in her bosom, pressed against her red and gold sari that smelled faintly of freshly cooked pastry. At that moment, she was everything I needed: tender, assuring, and nurturing. I didn't even know her name. Even if I did, I couldn't have spoken it. At that point, I was fading.

My husband returned with the doorman, who only spoke Urdu. He had always been helpful, especially when he found out I was pregnant. He clearly understood the urgency and followed instructions without hesitation.

My husband had decided not to call for an ambulance because there was no guarantee it would get to the building quickly. We lived near the hospital. Driving there would have been quicker.

The neighbour secured the baby in the carrier seat while my husband and the doorman secured me on a desk chair with wheels. We headed out of the apartment and down a fluorescent-lit, air-conditioned corridor towards the lift.

I was there, but not there. Everything was going on outside of me. I had no control of my body, and I couldn’t speak. I was helpless.

The heat was stifling when we got to the car port. My husband and the doorman lifted me into the backseat of our Ford Escape SUV. The doorman hopped in the front passenger side while my husband snapped the baby’s carrier seat next to me. The neighbour lady clicked my seatbelt. She then put her hands on my cheeks and kissed my forehead. The lady stood there as we backed out onto a dirt road and left for the hospital. This was the last time I saw her or that version of my life.

Everything was about to change in ways I could not have imagined.

Share

Read Part 2 now

Thank you for reading. If you want to show appreciation:

Buy me a cup of tea