This week’s Dispatches from New Motherhood piece is ISABELLE by Emma Lancaster, an incredibly powerful and moving account of being rushed to hospital at 33 weeks pregnant for an emergency C-section (TW: birth story). In rhythmic, controlled, and unflinching prose Emma shares her experience of pre-eclampsia, and the distressing journey that led to the birth, ‘here and safe’, of her daughter. Thank you to Emma for this beautifully expressed and affecting piece.
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Isabelle
Emma Lancaster
I remember lying in bed, the sunlight just starting to come in through the blinds.
I remember studying the patchy ceiling that looked more grey than white.
I remember feeling safe and comfortable, thinking about the tiny baby growing inside me.
Then, I remember feeling something. An intense cramp in my stomach.
I remember reaching down with my hand and pulling it back, red with blood.
I was 33 weeks pregnant.
I remember screaming for my husband.
I remember the look on his face as he fumbled around trying to find my orange medical book and dialling 999.
I remember the four paramedics who burst into the room in a blur of green and yellow.
I remember a lot of questions and trying to get the answers out through tears that wouldn’t stop.
I remember the flashing blue lights, then a white sterile room and a nurse who fitted a monitor around my stomach.
I remember a heartbeat and the pressure of my husband's hand in mine.
Then, the words: 'We have to do an emergency C-section.'
I remember a mask being put over my face and someone counting backward from ten.
I remember my hand being dragged apart from my husband’s.
And then, well, then nothing.
I didn’t see or feel her being born. I didn’t get to hold her to my chest. I didn’t give her her first taste of milk.
I was not the first person she saw or smelt or felt.
I couldn’t bring her the comfort she needed when thrust so suddenly into this cold and scary world.
I remember being told it took doctors just seven minutes to tear my tiny baby out of me – saving her life.
I remember a yellow room and looking down to see my husband asleep on the floor next to me.
I remember needles, lots of needles, prodding and poking.
I remember being told I had pre-eclampsia which had led to a placental abruption.
I remember asking why this had happened and never really getting an answer.
I remember an overwhelming feeling of guilt. Guilty that I hadn’t kept her safe; that my body had evicted her before she was ready.
I can’t tell you what happened to my baby that first night in intensive care. I was too ill to go to her.
I know she was brought to me for a few fleeting minutes the day after she was born – the first time I would see her – but I don’t remember how she looked or how she smelt.
I remember the next day and the painful journey upstairs to NICU.
I remember feeling weak and tired but desperate to see the daughter I knew I’d had, but hardly seen.
I remember her red and screwed-up skin that looked too big for her body.
I remember her peacefully asleep, the incubator providing her new warm place.
I remember thinking how beautiful she was, here and safe, my Isabelle.
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Isabelle by Emma Lancaster 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.