One year ago today, Tina and I woke at 4:30 in the morning and drove to Georgetown University hospital. There in Labor and Delivery, a department Tina had been admitted to three times before, we started the long process of inducing labor. We would spend thirty-six hours in one of the special delivery rooms, waiting for magic to happen. But labor stalled, and a c-section became the only option.

By the time the girls were surgically extracted from the womb on July 28, Tina was on the road to serious infection and pnemonia, and we were about to embark on a 10-day journey through the depths of hell and despair. With twins, I always expected complications, but what I never expected was for Tina to hover near death. The irony was that the girls were healthy, and before I was ready to become solely responsible for their care, that role was handed to me. As our stay stretched beyond the three day standard, I began to believe that we would be in the hospital for months, and that Tina would never recover. Scenarios played out in my head as I tried to keep myself from unravelling under the stress of it all. What would I do if I lost Tina? How would I take care of my daughters, who I barely knew and whose constant needs and desperate vulnerbility terrified me?

I ate and drank very little, as the days became a blur of feedings and diaper changings and the desperate hope that Tina would recover. Relief came fleetingly — my mother had her own surgical procedure that kept her away for several days, so for much of the experience, I was the only one at Tina’s side who could walk and get up to change the girls. But I wasn’t really alone. There was Eileen, a dear friend of Tina’s who always had a somewhat distant relationship with me, but who I grew to love very much as she was a constant source of companionship and support. I never knew how much I would miss her until she went home to Chile. And my old friend Michael, who came to visit on one of the lowest days, despite having a job interview — a visit that came at just the right time, as I was unsure I could continue. And my creative collaborator and good friend, Jake, whose voicemail message the night before we left for the hospital is perhaps one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. My mother, despite her surgery, was also a source of great help, and when she came down to help while recovering from her own wounds, I felt more grateful than I’d ever felt in my life. Without any of them, I don’t think I would have made it.

In the end, we returned home. Not triumphantly as we had imagined, but tired and half-dead. We limped into the apartment carrying our children late on a Saturday evening, and it was from that low place that we began our family. If only I had known then how fast it would go by. How I would grow to love the quiet moments — the late night feedings, the early smiles, infant Anya’s sleepy involuntary laughter. How everything would start to come together.

I remember sitting in our solarium, watching the sunrise behind Malcom X Park, a cool breeze blowing in through the screened windows and a sense of calm, an understanding that the worst was behind us. And I am nostaligic for all the half-delirious 3:00 AM feedings watching Dave Chappelle on DVD, or a late repeat of Conan O’Brian, the Comicon episode of Entourage, or making fun of the History Detectives. Once, there was even a four-hour documentary on the history of videogames, which I watched straight through, shrugging off the 15-minute naps between feedings. Television, as reviled as it is, provided a relief and escape from all the hardship that had come before. And comedy most of all helped Tina and I make it through those difficult first weeks when we became parents.

But most of all, I remember how my dear little girls took me by the hand and lead me out of the darkness of depression. And how together, as a family, we survived asthma, more pneumonia, two hospitalizations, three stomach flus and so much more in that terrible, beautiful year.

1 Comment

• 

  By tina the seamonster, August 7, 2006 @ 3:10 pm

  this is lovely. you should get more comments.

Other Links to this Post

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment