This week we have an extraordinary poem for you from Dispatches from New Motherhood; Imogen Schäfer’s WHEN I GAVE BIRTH is a bravely honest and incredibly moving account of the birth of her daughter.
‘I hadn't initially planned to write about my birth experience,’ says Imogen. ‘It felt somehow too soon to try to put down in words the trauma of waking up in Intensive Care after my labour, with no clue as to why I was there or where my baby was. But whenever I began trying to write about any other aspect of motherhood, nothing felt quite right; nothing flowed. With some reluctance, I started writing about my birth experience, and the words just started pouring out. To my surprise, it turned out that writing about the birth of my daughter was actually the exact thing I needed to begin to process the trauma of it all.’
Imogen goes on to say, ‘I wrote in the evenings once my baby was sleeping and I will always remember those evenings with real fondness and gratitude that the act of writing (and having a deadline!) gave me the space I needed to begin to heal.’
Imogen joined Mothership Writers in her last trimester of pregnancy, and returned to our workshops just a month after her daughter’s birth. Her beautifully expressed poem – the first she’s written – is a feat of strength, and we’re honoured to share it with you here.
***
When I Gave Birth
Imogen Schäfer
I still haven’t said, 'When I gave birth'.
I fall clumsily around the words, trying to find a way of telling
how you came to be in the world
that doesn’t feel
like a falsehood.
I still haven’t said, 'When I gave birth'.
It sounds deceitful –
too proactive –
for such a passive act.
The slicing open of my skin,
the tearing through muscle and sinew,
to rip out a baby
caught unawares.
I still haven’t said, 'When I gave birth'.
72 hours of labour is somehow not enough
to earn the right to say,
'I birthed my baby'
when in reality,
someone else gave birth to you
tore you
from your warm cocoon.
I don’t even know their name.
I still haven’t said, 'When I gave birth'.
It seems misleading
when my first sight of you
was in a stranger’s arms
instead of mine.
I tried to reach up to stroke your newborn foot
but found my limbs paralysed.
'It’s a girl', your dad sobbed
as you were both rushed away
from the developing emergency –
the heavy shock of adrenaline
delaying my screams to have my baby back
on my chest
where she belonged.
I still haven’t said, 'When I gave birth'.
How can I have given birth to someone
when I was barely alive?
Heart in shutdown,
lungs collapsing.
Hurried talk of hysterectomy
and how to save my life
while all I could do was lie bleeding
and wonder,
where has it gone wrong?
before the theatre lights faded
and shut off
into darkness;
my long-held dreams of our serene first meeting
stolen, without remorse.
I still haven’t said, 'When I gave birth'.
Waking up in a room I’ve never seen,
a sea of blue pleated curtain,
my mother appears as a blur amongst the waves.
Unrelenting thuds of pain
and no sign of a baby,
only Star Trek screens and a deflated belly
covered by the cheap fabric of a hospital gown.
A deep sense of unease
spread over my limbs
like spilt oil;
the tube down my throat
suffocating any attempt to speak
or scream
or sob.
I still haven’t said, 'When I gave birth'.
After they told me you were safe,
my first question
was
‘Do I still have my womb?’
My fingers, heavy with sedation,
trying their best to move
across the laminated alphabet card,
to spell out questions
whose weight
I could not yet fully understand.
And then.
The sickening crack of comprehension
and a wrenching in my gut so powerful,
it reached up
and tore at my throat
when I realised
your first seconds, minutes, days
of life
had been lived without me.
After nine months of just us,
how could 50 strangers have known
the colour of your eyes
before I did.
But despite the fact
I’ve still not found the words to say
how you came to be in this world,
I can at least say
I gave birth to the wildest, fiercest, most potent love
I have ever known.
***
When I Gave Birth by Imogen Schäfer appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.