Winter Solstice. Lucia's birth story,part 1.

November 27, 2008. I had a dream about Lucia tonight. I was on my grandparent’s back porch—a large redwood deck looking into the Pennsylvania wood. My hands were searching my belly, feeling her position, and I could feel her head under my sternum. Breech, I thought. But my hands searched her head, and continued to her shoulders, and then connected to her arms which wrapped around my middle. Then I realized she was holding onto my belly, rather than being inside me. I looked down to see her dark hair. Ah, she is beautiful. Simply gorgeous. When I held her up I could see these violet eyes, and a smile. Her nose was crooked, so I took my finger and pushed it straight. And her eyes were violet. Stunningly violet purple. But what stuck with me was her smile and the peace on her face. That is what she gave me—a sense of peace from her smile. It is all she did, smile. I held her as I once held my Beatrice, on the left, to feed from the breast…it wasn’t a long enough dream. After my dream, I wanted her middle name to be Paz, which means “peace” in Spanish.

December 21, 2008. I had predicted many months ago, that my daughter would be born on solstice. That day, a Sunday, there was something about the lack of movement that was disturbing me. Had it been one day or two? Did I feel her yesterday? I couldn’t remember. Chasing my 20-month old daughter means that I seldom pay attention to movement during the day. I had attended a baby shower earlier, and thought I felt some shifting, but honestly, that seems all I have felt for Saturday and Sunday—shifting. Her bum would suddenly be hard and in front. Maybe there wasn’t enough room. I was 38 weeks. She must be tired from all the contractions I had had Thursday and Friday. I kept justifying all these different reasons for not feeling her be squirmy, but the truth is Friday, I know she was wiggling, and Thursday, I was in the hospital being monitored for what was a slightly elevated blood pressure. She was there, and responsive, and her heartbeat was beautifully loud in the little room.

Sunday evening, after I sat for a while, I began prodding her, moving her head, trying to get a reaction from her, but her body felt limp in my belly. I searched my belly for a heartbeat with a stethoscope. Nothing. My husband told me that it is difficult with the stethoscope to hear the heartbeat. I called the midwife. She told me to come to the hospital to be monitored.

In my mind, I kept thinking that I was going to look like a fool to come in and be monitored for my healthy baby. But still, I couldn’t be sure. I was just so anxious at this point, so nervous of that which could not be spoken. I asked Sam so many times, “Is she okay, Sam? She is going to be okay, right?” And he tried to remain optimistic, but I think we were both scared in the same way. We didn’t want to speak of what could be.

To say this was completely off of my radar is an understatement. I had prepared myself for the most horrible possibility of, say, having to have a c-section, rather than natural childbirth, but the idea that she could possibly die had never even entered my consciousness. We sat in PETU waiting for the nurse to come check her heart rate. She was one of those nurses you want on your team. Loud. Brash. Endearingly maternal to those who are brave. She searched and searched. And I began to cry. She said, “Ah, honey, sometimes I can’t find the heartbeat, let me get the ultrasound tech.” The team came in, and when there were three, and my midwife, I think it began to hit me that something was really wrong. The tech and the doctors introduced themselves. They started. “Here is her head.” And I saw her head, and then the screen panned down to her little ribs. Nothing.

“There is no heartbeat,” I said it first, I think. And the doctor said those words that I never wanted to hear, “Your little girl has passed away.”

I held onto my husband and we wept and wept. There was something about that moment that was so incredibly primal. I just wanted to shave my head. No, scratch that, it’s not quite right. Shaving my head sounds like a nice process. Studying religion, I had read about Jain nuns who pulled each hair out of their head for fear of hurting the lice that might be peacefully residing in their scalp. That is what I thought of, quietly pulling each hair out of my head until I was bald. Suddenly, yes, even lice were someone’s kid. Then, I wanted to wrap myself in orange cloth and fall on the ground sobbing. I wanted a ritual right then. Anything.

After a minute, I asked all those questions, “Why? How?” And then they began saying that it is nothing I could have prevented or done. It was not my fault. And that I may never know what killed my daughter. How had I gone through my whole life not knowing this? How had I managed to escape this particular insight into how cruel the world is to some parents? As though I found out that God picks some children to simply draw the life out of, without explanation, I felt outside of myself. As though I was someone who just had their forehead branded with a symbol of their grief, I just simply spoke the obvious, “My heart is broken.”