Two days ago I found an article in English that was titled quite similar to this, and without reading it, just with the title, it already caused me a "it's true". After a little reflection evoking many of the moments lived I decided that I had to write about that too, and not to "contaminate" the words of that father I decided not to read it. So I would have my own reasons to explain to the world how strong and incredible my wife is and, by extension, all women (or the vast majority, I imagine).
That one is receiving from childhood the message that they are weak sex because "you hit like a girl", "you run like a girl" or "you cry like a girl", "nenaza", but when you grow up and see that the girl She is already a woman, and you see her gestate, you see her give birth and you see her raise, you are forced to surrender to the evidence and ask yourself who knows how many men would be able to do the same. And is that I didn't realize how strong my wife was until I saw her give birth (and raise).
That first birth that ended in caesarean section
It was Jon's birth, just over 11 years ago. She was 24 years old and I was 26, and we barely knew what the movie was about, but we were quite clear that being young, it was likely that everything was shot. But no. After a dilation that went too slowly they decided to put the epidural to help a little with oxytocin. I was not present, and I was surprised how she told me after that moment of "Don't move, honey, I'm sticking a needle in your spinal cord", about to have a contraction.
After the epidural came the oxytocin, the baby began to do bradycardia (the heart was lowering frequency) and they decided to do caesarean section. At that time I was alone. They told me that they would have a C-section and that I had to wait in a room, alone.
She alone, and me alone. I had a bad time? Relatively. Nothing compared to what she was living: Cesarean? Implying? It hurt? Is my baby okay? Where is Armando? Do you know that I am here? Is everything alright? I'm going to die? Will he die?
Two hours later, he climbed and his whole body trembled with analgesia. He wanted to take Jon, but he didn't dare because he was cold and trembling. I was happy, but pale. I was lively, but scared. And I was just a young "man" with a baby in his arms and a woman lying on a stretcher, with a newly opened abdomen to the bowels and an impressive pile of gauze hiding the obvious.
In Babies and more The important role of the father during childbirth, captured in incredible and emotional photographsI remember the following days, asking for help to heal the wound. "Look to see, Armando, that I think some are getting infected." His abdomen swollen, bruised, joined from top to bottom like someone closing an envelope, almost like a flap, and all anchored with an infinite number of staples, or so it seemed. Where I had put caresses and kisses there was only a tremendous wound and a lot of staples. Staples As children, they told us to stay away from the staplers because we could stick one in our finger; and Miriam was almost ten. And instead of telling me: "Look at my abdomen, what have they done to me?", He asked me to heal him in case anyone was infected, and "come on, lest the child begin to cry."
Because she didn't care about all that. Do you want to talk about what happened? It was a question that flew over my mind and I never asked him. Of course we have talked about it over time, but not then. Only superficially. Because it was not necessary. For her it was just one more detail of the path that led her to be a mother. And that was the important thing for her.
Crying, for cracks in the nipples
The first day they asked him what he wanted to do, whether to breastfeed or not. And she said her chest, but she hadn't raised it. And once he made the decision, he didn't release it at any time. I remember coming home in the afternoon and seeing her with the messy house, sitting on the couch, with the child in her arms and crying. Crying to see that he could do nothing but take care of Jon. Crying in pain at the cracks it was causing. Crying to see that despite the pain, his dedication, being at all times for and for him, her baby was still crying. Crying to see him cry.
I didn't suggest the option of giving him a bottle, or I don't remember doing it, but if I had told him I would have said no. Why do you continue if you suffer? Why do you continue if he is not well either? There would be no answer. She had decided to do so and I wasn't going to be able to change her mind, whatever she said.
And so we planted in the month of life, when we realized that he had earned little for everything he had sucked. About 800 grams from discharge for a baby who lived hooked to the breasts of a woman who was shaking every time she heard him moan, because he knew that seconds later I was going to have to offer my chest between tears of pain.
I realized that what a mother can do for a child, nobody will ever do for another person.
Days later a surgeon cut a sublingual frenulum that reached the tip of the tongue (thankfully this has now changed a lot and is not only detected before, but acts before) after asking: Are you telling me, really, That this child is sucking, that you don't give him anything else and that he is gaining weight?
Needless to say, that same afternoon Miriam saw a clearing in the clouds, sighed and swear that she let go of a tear of emotion when she realized that she was finally taking a chest without hurting it.
The second delivery, seven days
If you ask her if she feels more woman, more mother, better woman or better mother than the others, she may wonder why you ask something like that, that of course not at all. But I do see her that way. At least she is more female than any man (whatever that means).
The second pregnancy brought us an unexpected surprise. In week 34 the contractions began and in the hospital they decided to try to stop the delivery. Each day that happened in the womb would be fewer days in the incubator. To achieve this, he was prescribed some pills that he had to take every day to prevent the baby from being born already.
And this phrase was recorded: "Every day inside is several days less in the incubator." So recorded that it endured a whole week of contractions every 10 minutes, which is what the pills achieved, that were not effective, that there was no dilation, but without eliminating them completely. And when I say every 10 minutes I mean day and night. One week. Seven days with its seven days and seven nights. With a child of almost three years who still needed her to fall asleep.
"Do they hurt you?" "Of course they hurt. But a lot. I think they hurt as much as the labor contractions" (then he confirmed to me, on the day of the birth, that it hurt the same). He closed his eyes, slept for a while and began to shrink in bed, groaning, until the contraction was gone. He slept a few minutes, shrugged again, complained, and again the same cycle. So until two or three in the morning he went to the sofa or sat on the ball for a while.
"Armando, give me a massage please, I have a broken back." And it was three in the morning. With the lack of sleep we had been doing for three years, at that time sitting in the dining room while the child was sleeping. And I want to go back to bed ... but what did I say, that I had a dream that was dying? If she had it too, but she couldn't sleep on top because his body was telling him that the baby wanted to leave and the chemistry would not let him do it (Each day inside is several days less in the incubator).
A week later, the time came when I could no longer (I still can't explain how much it lasted) and we went to the hospital, where he was still twelve hours more to give birth, after stopping taking the medicine. Aran was born, who needed six days of incubator. Y she still wondered if she couldn't have endured a little more.
Incubator was to go to the hospital continuously to breastfeed, go back home, back to the hospital, get milk for me to give it at night, discuss with the nurses for not letting him breastfeed on demand, but every three hours, crying to tell them that he was obsessing and that he was doing it wrong, and in the meantime try to remain a mother to Jon, that the poor man did not understand why we spent so much time in that place, and try to be a mother to Aran, in pain to feel where he was, left one of his children without his presence.
In Babies and more Nine things dad can do in the postpartum, which mom and baby will appreciateAnd the nights of Aran
And so came the nights of Aran, that the first months, perhaps because of the inertia of having been trying to be born for a week without getting it, decided that to sleep he needed a tit, but not in bed, but in arms. And not in the arms sitting, but standing. "Like when you moved on the ball, mom, and you told me to wait a little to be born. Rock me, mom, and calm me with your chest." And she did it. He went to the dining room with him so as not to wake Jon, every night, to walk him in his chest. Because in fact that was how I suckled for the day: in the chest, in motion. If not, he cried. And there was no possible comfort.
And then came Guim's pregnancy, with some nausea and dizziness (like being in a boat at all hours) that we thought would end at three months, then maybe at four, possibly at six, and that we finally understood, and He understood that they would continue until the moment of delivery. Alone at home while I worked outside, with two children and all day staggering or lying on the couch trying to avoid fainting.
The day of delivery? All evils went away and he became a person again.
I didn't realize until I saw you do all that and much more
And I've only told you a part, which is the one I remember best because they are the most transcendental moments. But they are associated with everyone else: the week she was admitted to the baby with a urine infection, she barely slept and when she got home she woke up totally disoriented, dreaming that her son was being taken, looking for him between the sheets when he he had by his side; the nights I spent with the tit out and a child stuck at all times; the long walks with the child in his arms when he had not yet discovered the baby carriers ... and all the moments he has not told me, that I have not seen, that I have lost, or that I no longer remember. Because if all this, which seems so incredible to me, to her it seems something like normal, the rest will be for her nothing, a bad time and that's it.
That is why when I see women breastfeeding their children while they are rocked to their feet to sleep, when I see that they carry them and are loaded to the teeth, probably with the weight of the whole day on their backs, when they still ask me if waking up every hour at night can be a problem for the baby, because if it is for them they are willing to continue like this because they do not want to stop being there for their children, I can't help getting a little excited. Because I see great mothers. Because I see that we connect in that of loving children over all things. Because I imagine I was a baby, and I would like such a mother.
And be careful, I don't say it because I think that all women have to take care like this and those who don't do it do it wrong. I say this because I am aware that, even if I told them otherwise, they would do the same. Because before asking me, or before I see them, I am sure that there have already been several people who, weighing in their comfort, have wanted to teach them to raise otherwise, without success.
And Miriam was (is) one of them. Not in a hundred lives would I live the same as she has lived in the last eleven years, so I can only surrender to the evidence that those who deserve all the admiration and respect of society for being mothers are them.
They, with their dark circles, their hours of sleep faded, their wrist, back, neck aches ... their physical scars and their psychological scars, those that remain after someone treats them like little girls, when they are doing the greatest thing there is, which is to bring a life to the world.
They, with their days and nights thinking first of their babies, perhaps in us and then, and if so, in themselves. And many, on top, trying to convince us (TO US, that we haven't done ANYTHING!), That let's dedicate a little more time to your children, who are also our, because they just want us to love them and take care of how they feel they should, because it comes from within.
I never realized how strong Miriam is, and how strong they all are, and everything they do, until he brought our children into the world and took care of them as I would not have known, sure, in those one hundred lives.
Photos | Kelly Sue DeConnick on Flickr, iStock
In Babies and more | Women who care for their children are also working mothers, Why should no recent mother spend a lot of time alone (or feel lonely), How do modern mothers feel about their motherhood?
