I don't know why I didn't "get it." But there just was this insatiable urge inside me to have more children. I look back now and wonder how on earth I could have been thinking the way I did. I couldn't stand noise. I couldn't stand commotion. I couldn't stand the constant interruptions and demands for my attention. Well ...that is, when I was sober, which was almost never by now. Yet still I believed that if I had another child, maybe that child would love me.
But there was an even greater reason behind my obsession to have children. I had a profound fixation with the knowledge that I could give life. I had done nothing else of worth in my dark life, but this I could do. I could give life. And isn't that the greatest thing a person can do in life? To give life? The very thought of it put me in awe. I remember one day as I toyed with the idea that I couldn't be a good mother, I said to myself that I only had to give each one 18 years, and then they'd have a whole life to live in front of them. I had that power. That power to give life. To create a human being who would live forever. I could not think of a single more wonderful thing a person could do in life than to give life, to create a human life. And I was obsessed with this understanding.
Bob didn't want more children of course, but one night we were both drunk and Dan was conceived. I hadn't even remembered the conception process. That was frequent now, the blackouts. I'd lose whole days, not knowing where I had been or what I had done. But surprise ...another child was on the way, and I was thrilled. Another person. And maybe he or she would love me. If not now, because I was hardly a mother to them, then maybe later when they were older and could maybe understand and forgive my inability to be a true mother to them.
Two months into the pregnancy, I had a miscarriage. Bob rushed me to the hospital, bleeding a lot, I did pass what looked like a very tiny fetus, and the doctor confirmed that I had had a miscarriage. He wanted to do a "D&C," but I refused. I somehow knew, don't ask me how, but incredibly I somehow knew I was still pregnant. The doctor was angry and Bob was angry, they told me I could die if I didn't let them treat me, but I refused. And sure enough ...I WAS still pregnant. I had lost one of a set of twins.
The doctor told me that this is a high-risk pregnancy, and to take it really easy. I had a calendar and marked off the days, recording on each interval what was developing in the child. One day he got fingers, another day his eyes were completely formed. I had done this with all my children.
As we began the third trimester, I remember telling someone that now the child is viable, meaning that if he or she was born now, there was a good chance he would survive.
That all changed on the morning of January 28. I was ironing. And I started having pain. At first I thought I was sick or something, it didn't register to me that these might be labor pains. I still had 8 weeks to go, no, this isn't that.
But it was. I called Bob at work and got a babysitter for the children and went to the doctor's office. He examined me and said, "you're in full labor. We cannot stop this." I cried, "you HAVE to stop this, I still have 8 weeks to go!" "No," he said, "there's nothing I can do. Go immediately to the hospital."
I labored all that day and Dan was born at 7:05 that night. The doctor was surprised that he was larger than expected. My babies had all been small, my first son was the largest at only 6-1/2 pounds. So the fact that Dan weight 4-1/2 pounds suggested that perhaps I was farther along than we thought, and that would mean the baby would have a better chance now, for survival.
All night long I heard what I interpreted as alarms going off in the nursery. As soon as I was totally awake, I sat us and was combing my hair, getting ready to go to the nursery to see my new son. Suddenly the door opened and the pediatrician came in and said in all bluntness, "The baby didn't survive. His lungs failed."
I went into my usual shock response. I felt nothing. I asked, "what time did he die?" The doctor answered, "at 7:05 this morning." I noted the timing. Not 7:00 or 7:10, but 7:05. Dan lived exactly twelve hours.
Later that morning a nurse's aid came and sat at my bedside. I asked her to leave. I felt a great invasion of privacy. I had to process what had just happened. She told me she couldn't leave because the doctor placed me on suicide watch. To this day I don't know why he did that, because ending my life had never occurred to me, not then, not ever.
On the day Bob picked me up to come home, the first thing I saw when I entered the livingroom was my February issue of the layman's journal of the American Medical Association. On the cover was the happy announcement that they have now perfected the way to save premature infants whose lungs aren't completely ready. They give them a medicine that acts as a surfactant, and this gets their lungs working right away. That's what I saw first, on entering my house. I knew that if there was a devil, he had arranged this. He threw it in my face. This new procedure being announced on the day I came home after my son died.
Bob saw that I was inconsolable, so he suggested that we go down to the Irish Tavern and have some Irish Coffee, my favorite alcoholic drink. So we went. As they delivered my Irish Coffee, the band started playing. The song? "Oh Danny boy."
I kid you not.
