Page 96 of This Love
Ava had to be taken to surgery to stop her bleeding. It was a simple procedure, they’d assured me. Nothing invasive. It wouldn’t slow down her recovery or keep her from having another baby. But the extra bleeding seemed to have triggered another seizure.
We were starting over again, only hours after the last time.
I waited in the labor room with Tad. He slept, rolled in a blanket, with a tiny hat on his head. Kenisha stayed with me, a hand on my shoulder. She didn’t seem to hate me anymore.
The surgery didn’t take long, and within a half-hour, Jennifer returned to tell us that Ava was fine and would be brought back to the room once she was out of recovery.
I hadn’t told anyone Tad had been born yet. The shock of the moment when Ava seized again was still hot and sharp in my body. Then all the staff arrived. And they’d rushed her out.
I pressed my nose to Tad’s cheek. Ava wouldn’t even remember she had given birth to him. She’d barely seen him before she went under.
How was I going to manage this?
I needed to tell Gram. She could be here quickly. I shifted Tad to one arm and tapped out a quick note.
Me: Tad is here. He’s perfect. You can come now.
The rest of the news could wait. I skimmed everything I had missed during the emergency. Marcus was delayed. Traffic in Houston had taken an extra two hours.
Gram: On the way!
Shoot, I needed to tell her to bring the scrapbook and the laptop.
But before I could type anything else, the door opened. I thought it might be Ava returning, but a NICU nurse stepped in. “Time to take this little guy for his bath and assessment.” He reached for Tad and set him into the clear plastic bed.
Kenisha stood up. “Go with the baby. This is a big photo moment, and you’ll want to show them to Ava later.”
I nodded and followed the clear bassinet down the hall. The three of us were buzzed into a secure area and made our way to the vast windows looking out on the hall.
They moved Tad to a bed beneath a warm lamp. He got unswaddled, which he didn’t like at all. His face grew bright red as he protested the nurse washing his tiny body.
I took photos and videos. A doctor arrived and pressed a stethoscope to his chest. He moved Tad’s legs and arms, testing joints. “APGAR of nine,” he told the nurse. To me, he said, “He looks good and healthy.”
He placed drops in Tad’s eyes, then the cleaning resumed.
At one point, I looked up and noticed Gram had arrived. She waved at us from the other side of the glass. I forced a smile. She didn’t know that Ava had bled too much, seized again, and needed surgery.
I would tell her in the room.
She took pictures with her phone, tears streaking down her face. I understood. This was the first addition to our tiny family since losing my parents and brother so many years ago. She had someone new to call her own.
I pressed my finger to Tad’s tiny palm, and his fingers gripped mine. He still cried, though. “I’m not Mom,” I told him. “I know.”
The nurse smiled up at me. She probably didn’t know about Ava either, that the mother had no idea this baby existed. I pretended for a moment that I didn’t know either. That we were a normal family, and this was the best day of our lives, not one full of mixed blessings and curses.
“He’s a strong one,” the nurse said as she slipped a onesie over Tad’s head, making him cry again. I wanted to hold him close and stop his tears.
But there was so much to do with Ava. I didn’t know what she would be like when she got back. We’d be starting all over for the second time in one day. The baby would be in the room. They’d expect her to feed it.
I’d have to introduce myself again. We didn’t have our tools, the sequence we’d put together.
And hospitals were terrible places to figure out who you are. The smells were wrong. The food would be different. We wouldn’t have a bed that seemed right or a house that felt like home.
Even so, as I looked down at Tad, I felt hope. There was an important moment when the doctor placed the baby on Ava’s chest. He stopped crying, and she seemed shocked that her body calmed him.
We read all the pregnancy books and knew that the baby would recognize Ava’s heartbeat and voice. For him, she was everything. His memories of her began months ago. She wouldn’t remember reading the books and learning about having a newborn, but she seemed to recognize that her baby knew her.
Hopefully, it would work again. That the wonder of a baby, and his attachment to her, would hit her at a level below memory and into her very cells.
