During those hours, I questioned any faith that remained, I cursed god and demanded deliverance from the dark. Finally, the nurse agreed to wheel me to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and once again I was unprepared; unprepared for the intensity of my love for this baby boy covered in wires, tape and tubes.
That was the beginning of the journey of building our white picket fence. At 2:33 a.m. on the day after my son’s birth, I touched his small, swollen and bruised hand and found my new builder. The next morning brought our first obstacle; I had to mourn the child that would never be.
In a suffocating and institutionalized room beside the NICU, a Genetic Counselor opened her chart of chromosomes and announced in a cold and matter-of-fact manner that my son had Down syndrome.
That is when I hit the floor, literally and figuratively. Familiar hands cradled my splintered mind and body and gently placed me back in my wheelchair. Watching the counselor’s mouth moving, I heard nothing as every corner of my mind filled with the “never and what-ifs”.
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As I lay on the table in the recovery room, people spoke and I heard pieces of muffled conversations referencing priests, baptisms, and last rites. “He can’t go before I meet him,” I wanted to scream but I could not find my voice. I knew that I could not leap from the bed because I just had a Cesarean Section and doctors roughly converged on my recovery room trying to regulate my temperature. As I lie on my bed, flashes of light and memories interrupted me while I continued searching my mind for comfort.
Words would not come and the unfamiliar faces that entered and exited my room offered no information. I wanted to crawl to Quinn; I wanted to grasp my baby from the clutches of death and run- run with him to a place where I could cradle him from the harsh entrance and struggles of his first minutes.
I made it to my room later that evening in a blur of familial tears and embraces.
Standing up from the confines of my hospital bed while grasping the IV pole, I willed myself to take steps. In those first dark, hazy hours, I raged at the unfolding drama. My anger and disbelief flowed outward and I wished for others to feel my pain. These moments still wrack my memory at times; moments when my soul showed a capability to turn evil. As I listened to nurses wheeling the white-picket-fence babies to the waiting arms of exultant parents, I wanted to extinguish their joy.
The sound of those squeaky wheels on the freshly waxed linoleum served as a constant reminder that my son would never make an appearance in my doorway and I wanted them silenced. Those parents did not deserve these gentle moments more than I did and I yearned for what I rightly deserved.
Kelly with her two boys Quinn and Santino
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