It was nobody’s fault that the baby died. It was one of those things that sometimes happened, beyond anyone’s control. They wanted to make sure she understood that, so they said it over and over, all the while watching her closely. They had expected her to scream or cry, to become irrational, but she only nodded her head. All she felt was a great emptiness and a relief that it was all over.
Ellen had lain back, staring at the ceiling of the bare delivery room as the nurse stroked her hair and complemented her on the good job she had done. Ellen wanted to pull away, to make her stop, but she restrained herself. She was the model patient, the nurse said, obedient, compliant, not demanding. It was a shame that this had happened, a real shame. The nurse sighed, and Ellen saw compassion in her tired eyes. But no one was to blame.
She had felt cold and began to shiver before the doctor finished sewing her up, her whole body trembling and twitching. In the mirror she caught a glimpse of the doctor’s face above the mask, his eyes and forehead wrinkled in an expression of annoyance. He said something to the nurse, who stepped quickly to Ellen’s side.
“Lie still, dear. Let the doctor finish his work. He has another baby to deliver.” Ellen had gritted her teeth and made herself stop trembling.
Later they wheeled her into the small room she was to share with another woman. Ellen cringed at the thought, envisioning the cheer, the talk and the visitors that she would have to endure. She imagined a tiny pink baby, wrinkled and crying, lying by the woman in the next bed. She felt the stiffly starched hospital sheets under her bare legs, pulled tight at the corners of the bed. She tried to loosen them with her feet but they remained firm, covering her like a tent. The kind nurse leaned close to speak to her in the corridor.
“I’ll talk to Admissions and ask them not to assign anyone to the other bed unless absolutely necessary. Or would you rather we moved you out of Maternity altogether?”
Ellen looked at her gratefully but shook her head. “No. I still belong here. And I don’t want to give you any trouble.”
After visiting hours an aide came to give her a massage. Ellen lay stiff and unyielding under her probing fingers.
“You gotta relax, honey. Just relax and enjoy it. It’s all over now.”
The fingers dug into her muscles, and gradually Ellen felt some of the tension leaving her. In its place came deep fatigue and lethargy.
Then the woman turned to her, and Ellen stiffened once more.
“Do you get your baby again tonight?”
Ellen looked at her, oddly embarrassed. “My baby was stillborn.”
Later, when the lights were out she sank back into her pillows. Finally, she was alone. No one to please, no one to reassure. She could relax, let the tears come, then sleep, exhausted. Her muscles ached with the tension and strain of the day. Her face felt rigid, the polite expression she had worn all day a frozen mask over her features. She opened her mouth in a wide yawn, stretching her skin over her cheekbones. The soft soled steps of a nurse sounded in the corridor and the cry of a baby further away. Ellen touched her belly. It felt empty, the skin hanging loosely around her hips. She tried to breathe slowly, rhythmically, the way she had been taught, willing her muscles to relax. There was a pain behind her eyes and a throbbing in her head. She wished desperately for the release of tears. But she remained dry eyed, angry.
It had started less than twenty-four hours ago, with the first sharp labour pains, the nausea. And the elation and fear, all at once. Finally, a week late, the baby would come. She and Kevin would have their first baby, and she would be free of this tremendous extra weight that pulled down on her, making it impossible to lie or stand comfortably. She felt guilty listening to women talk about how they enjoyed pregnancy, how they missed being pregnant. All she wanted was to have this baby safely and her own body back again. She felt prepared, having eaten right, taken her vitamins, and practiced her childbirth exercises.
By the seventh month she was ponderous, clumsy. Her body was swollen and the ugly maternity clothes hung shapelessly around her, stretched to their capacity. She hung her head when Dr. Weller reproved her in his office. He spoke sharply and impatiently as he leafed through her chart, hardly looking at her.
“You’re gaining too much weight. You don’t want to look like a whale, do you? If you want to get your shape back after the baby is born, you’d better watch it.”
Ellen nodded meekly swallowing the bitter taste in her mouth along with the words that formed on her tongue. Her back ached and she felt dizzy from sitting on the examining table waiting for him for forty-five minutes. The nurse had told her to undress and put a sheet over her, so she would be ready for him. She didn’t bother to tell Ellen that he was still at the hospital delivering a baby.
Ellen had stared at the instruments on the table, the jar of cotton balls, the K-Y jelly and the chart depicting the birth of a baby in primary colours. Then she picked up one of the pamphlets entitled “Pregnancy: Your changing body.” The cover showed a pregnant woman walking a poodle in the rain. She carried an umbrella and was wearing stiletto heels. Inside, the first signs of pregnancy were described, and the expectant mother assured that her beauty and spiritual glow would increase over the coming months. Awkwardly she eased herself off the examining table and studied her face in the mirror above the sink, remembering the mornings spent in a haze of nausea, the constant feeling of exhaustion and the swollen features that stared back at her in the bathroom mirror.
The pamphlet talked about good nutrition in language slightly less sophisticated than what Ellen used with her sixth grade students. Finally, it prepared the shy, expectant mother for her first pelvic exam. The nurse would drape a sheet over her knees so that she wouldn’t be embarrassed. Ellen had always considered the business with the sheet slightly ridiculous. Why pretend that a sheet could save her dignity? She supposed it was easier to observe the ritual than to give up patronising her - easier and more convenient. Sometimes she had an almost irresistible urge to call Dr. Weller by his first name, William or better yet, Bill. How is your sex life, Bill? Have you “gotten together” with your wife lately?
The author of the pamphlet, probably a relic from another generation, concluded with a statement that nearly made her laugh aloud: “The young girl, confused by life and her role in it, is transformed through the birth of her baby into a self-assured young woman, glowing with new self-confidence, certain of her goals and direction.” Ellen laid the pamphlet down and climbed back onto the examining table. Vainly she tried to find a comfortable position, thinking of what her father had said when she told him about the childbirth classes.
“Why are you doing this? You’re meddling with the doctor’s business, sticking your nose into something that doesn’t concern you.” Ellen had stared at him, speechless.
Kevin had helped her dress in the middle of the night because her hands were shaking and she couldn’t bend down to pull on her boots. He left her alone while he warmed up the car and brushed the snow off, but she didn’t mind. She had been elated. She even made him go back to get the birth announcements she had bought several weeks ago.
Her contractions were coming fast when they reached the hospital. The night nurse took off Ellen’s coat, waited while she struggled out of her boots, then ordered her to step on a scale. It seemed like a long time before they let her lie down. A sudden contraction seized her and doubled her over, and she panted to relieve the pain.
“Roll over on your back,” the nurse commanded.
“Just a minute,” Ellen groaned. She was seeing things through a haze, distorted, the nurse’s eyes oddly large and bulging in her face.
“Now!” the nurse shouted. Ellen looked up, frightened. “I have to check your contraction,” she added more quietly.
Ellen rolled over with difficulty, the pain slicing through to her back. She couldn’t suppress a moan as the contraction reached its peak.
“How much water did you lose?” the nurse asked.
“A lot.”
“More than a teaspoon?”
“Enough to soak the sheets,” Kevin said from the side of the bed.
“Sometimes pregnant women wet themselves and think their water has broken,” the nurse said suspiciously. Then, “You have a good long while to go. We won’t bother your doctor yet.” She opened the curtains around her bed and left the room.
The sun was already up when the second bed in the room was filled. She was young and blonde and her name was Chrissie. In a short time she was thrashing around in her bed, screaming for help. Her husband sat on the edge of a chair, chain-smoking helplessly.
A sea of pain washed over Ellen, and she nearly cried out. Then she remembered her father’s words. He had hated interning in Maternity. Every time you walked down that floor you heard bestial cries coming from the labour rooms. Most women couldn’t conduct themselves with dignity, he had said. Ellen buried her face in the pillow, stifling her scream.
The smoke in the room became thick, swirling in the sunlight, settling over Ellen’s bed. It seared her lungs as she gasped for breath between contractions. Kevin waved a towel in the air ineffectively.
“I’m going to tell the nurse,” he said, getting up.
But Ellen pulled him back. “Don’t bother. I’ll be O.K. I don’t want to create any problems.”
Finally, she didn’t know how many hours later, the baby was ready to be born. Ellen felt a tremendous urge to bear down, a tremendous relief. The nurse checked her and showed Kevin the crown of the baby’s head. Two orderlies moved her onto a gurney and took her into delivery. The room was cold and bright and bare. She was strapped into the stirrups just as a tremendous contraction made her bear down with all her strength. She closed her eyes to concentrate, then opened them again. The nurse was leaning over her, speaking close to her face. Ellen saw her lips forming the words.
“Don’t push! Pant if you have to, but don’t push!”
The nurse’s words didn’t make sense. “But I have to,” Ellen groaned.
“No, you don’t! The doctor can’t come yet, so you’ll have to wait.”
“Where is the doctor?” Kevin asked.
“He’s delivering another baby. He’s got three of you in labour at the same time, so you’ll have to wait your turn,” she said from the doorway.
Ellen and Kevin were left alone. He held her hand, and she thought how strange he looked in a hospital gown. She panted as the minutes dragged by, a sharp slice of pain running down her back with each contraction. She tried to shift position to ease the ache but she was immobilized, her legs held firmly in the leather straps. After a while her contractions slowed, then ceased altogether. It must have been twenty minutes later when the nurse returned with a stethoscope. She listened for the baby’s heartbeat, then turned and quickly left the room.
After that, things happened very fast. Dr. Weller rushed in with a pair of huge forceps and Ellen’s wrists were taped to the table. Before she could ask what was happening someone clamped a mask over her face.
“Ask her husband to leave,” the doctor said to the nurse.
She caught a glimpse of Kevin’s face before he left. He looked frightened. Then the forceps were tearing at her, the nurse a terrible weight as she lay across her stomach, pushing, forcing the baby out. Ellen wanted to scream, but she had no breath, no voice. Then the baby was out, and Ellen could breathe again. They laid it, hot and wet on her stomach, and she listened for its cry. It never came.
“I see no sign of life, Doctor. Shall I keep trying?” the nurse asked.
“Yes, keep trying.”
But Ellen knew there wouldn’t be a cry. Quietly she turned her head and looked into the nurse’s face. “Is my baby dead?”
Slowly, the nurse nodded her head.
“All that effort for nothing,” Ellen said, turning her eyes to the ceiling. Then, “What was it?”
“A fine boy,” the doctor said. “Clean up the baby and show it to the parents.”
Kevin came back to hold her hand, try to kiss her hair. Ellen felt cold, without emotion. They all seemed to be watching her, waiting for something. Well, she wouldn’t give it to them.
The nurse brought the baby near her, and she pushed herself up on an elbow. The baby was wrapped in a blanket, his eyes closed, his face scrunched up. He had long black hair that stuck to his head in wet strands. He looked unreal. Ellen wanted to reach out and touch him, to feel him with her hands just once. But she was afraid that he would be cold, so she just looked, silently memorizing the tiny features.
She slept fitfully that night, waking frequently from dreams that eluded her. The tears never came, and by dawn she longed for the morning and something to do, something to occupy her mind. First there would be breakfast and a bath and a nurse to take her temperature. Later, Kevin would come, and maybe some of her friends. And finally, Dr. Weller.
Her friends came with baskets of fruit and cheer. Their voices and smiles were strained, unnatural. They too, were watching her. Ellen mimicked their brightness, their smiles, and seeing her that way they relaxed. They were doing her some good after all. Carefully they avoided talking about their children, about anything that might upset her. And yet everything now reminded her of children and babies.
Later that day her father arrived. He had taken a special flight so he could be there for her. She was surprised to see him, and uncomfortable. She hadn’t spoken to him since the birth; Kevin had been the one to tell him. He bent down to kiss her and murmur his sorrow, but she pulled back stiffly.
“I’m alright,” she said quickly.
“Are you, really?” She saw her father’s concern, but she remained closed, distant.
He had cards and messages from her aunt and cousins. She read her aunt’s card, then slipped it back into its envelope. It was so much like her to write those words, comfort shaped after a formula, predictable, empty. So right it made bitter tears form under her eyelids. But she only asked her father to convey her thanks. “It was God’s will,” her aunt wrote. “The Lord must have needed a little angel in heaven, so He took your baby. I will pray that you find comfort in His will.”
By late afternoon she was exhausted. Her head ached and she longed to be quiet, alone. It was difficult to put on the mask for Dr. Weller when he finally came.
He looked small and bald and ill-tempered sitting at the foot of her bed.
“We could find no reason for the baby being stillborn. All his organs were intact, nothing was malformed.” He sounded angry, dissatisfied.
Ellen felt a curious relief at his words. So it hadn’t been their fault. She and Kevin hadn’t made a defective baby. And it wasn’t because of the three glasses of wine she drank on her birthday that made her slightly tipsy, or the permanent she had before realizing that she was pregnant.
“Sometimes these things happen,” the doctor continued. “We can’t always find an explanation, so we just have to accept it.”
Ellen nodded.
Dr. Weller fiddled with his stethoscope, then went on. His words seemed rehearsed, hollow. He focused on a point over her shoulder, to the right of her face as he talked.
“There’s a natural period of grieving after an experience like this. But I’m not going to feel sorry for you. If you were forty and couldn’t have any more, I’d sit down and bawl with you, but you’re young and can have lots of other babies.” He paused, it seemed to Ellen, for effect.
Ellen glanced at him, then looked away. She was twisting the sheets in one hand, staring at the small pattern on her nightgown. She moved back against her pillow so her feet wouldn’t accidentally touch him. The doctor’s voice grated on her ears and she wanted him gone. But he continued.
“The sooner you have another baby, the sooner you’ll forget about this one. Your body needs some time to return to normal; you’re not a rubber band after all. But in six months you can go ahead and make another baby.” He stood up, satisfied with his speech, turned to leave, then added, “The one thing to remember is that is was nobody’s fault.”
The sentence hung in the air between them, the words so clearly enunciated they were nearly visible. The doctor had finished what he came to say; now it was their turn.
Ellen looked at Kevin. Kevin was staring at the floor. For the first time since it happened she wanted to reach out to him, to hold his hand. He looked up and caught her eyes, and for a long, impossibly tense moment she waited for him to speak. She thought she knew what he would say, what questions he would ask. They were the same questions that lay hidden behind her polite smile, her agreeable words. Her palms turned damp, and slowly, almost imperceptibly she shook her head. As the moment passed, they looked at the doctor and thanked him for everything.
ANAIS NIN - her journals and writings
CARL JUNG - his writings and unique view of the human psyche
CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES - her ability to combine storytelling and Jungian psychology
