"Do you think he can hold on for two more weeks? I just need two weeks."
My hospital bed was propped up to its highest level and my cell phone was tucked between my ear and shoulder while I wedged a pillow under my newborn's head and encouraged her to eat from my exposed breast. At less than twenty-four hours old, Dalloway already seemed uncomfortable and unwilling to eat, a harbinger of the four months of colic I was about to endure. But in the meantime, I had bigger problems to worry about: accompanying the new birth came talk of my dad's imminent death. On the phone with my uncle in San Francisco, I could hardly believe the urgency in my uncle's tone.
"Is he really that bad? I mean, he makes no sense on the phone and I know he's overdosing on his pain meds, but... it's only two weeks. He can last till then, right?"
As his chosen executor and closest confidante, I had tried to keep up on my father's condition during my last month of pregnancy, but it became clear that I could no longer effectively carry the power of attorney from three thousand miles away. I bought plane tickets from my hospital bed that same evening: in two weeks, I would fly across the country alone with my four-year-old, my two-year-old and my two week old baby to visit my dying father in San Francisco. Elliot had just started a new job so he couldn't pick up and leave for a week. Plus, we both assumed there would be several more "goodbye" visits like this one before my father's melanoma actually claimed his life. Hadn't he traveled to visit us just weeks before? He had shown signs of fatigue and it was impossible to ignore the excessive pill-popping, but it seemed to me he was a long way off from being... dead.
As soon as the plane tickets were bought, my already-hyper adrenaline skyrocketed. I had had the baby, now it was on to the next thing. My mind raced as I wheeled my baby to the nursery, as I watched the East River from my hospital window and as I waited for the next nurse to take my blood pressure: I had to get myself strong enough to make the trip, first of all, but then there was babysitting for the girls so they weren't just hanging around their sick grandpa all day. Where were we going to stay? Who could pick us up at the airport? Was there a hospice team already screened and waiting to be deployed? Would my dad's lawyer have time to meet with me while I was there? What were the names of his nurses? His doctors? His medications? If this was the real thing, there was a whole world of medical and legal bureaucracy that was about to eat me alive.
Panic didn't register as a fear, simply as a catalyst for more adrenaline to pump faster and harder. I was not afraid. I was simply determined. I knew I was about to jump into something big, bigger than I had ever handled before, but I felt steeled beyond feeling. Even my day-old baby, now snuggled close in the crook of my arm, failed to penetrate the emotional armor. There was no relaxing, no coddling and cooing here: I was prepared for battle.
My own St. Crispin's Day pep talk playing on repeat in my head was interrupted when the door of my room swung open and I heard a new bed, a second bed, being wheeled into my room. For my first day in the hospital recovery wing I had been fortunate enough to have a room to myself. But now, behind the blue checked curtains surrounding my bed, I could hear that I was going to have a roommate. The new mother herself was asleep, but from the nurses chatter I learned that she had had a long hard labor. Her husband, present at the birth, had apparently already escaped somewhere else. She was from Ghana, and the nurses wondered if husbands there are less involved with new babies than they are here.
Eventually, my roommate awoke, requested help to go to the bathroom, had her blood pressure taken, and made numerous phone calls to the absent husband. This was her first baby -- a boy -- and yet she remained alone the whole day. As evening came, her baby was brought to her to breastfeed. With the flimsy curtains mandating eavesdropping, I learned her little boy wasn't taking easily to breastfeeding. A lactation consultant stopped by after dinner, but left with little progress. "Just try again in a few hours," she advised.
By midnight, my invisible neighbor had worked herself into a panic over her son's inability to breastfeed. The little boy's cries and her exasperated cooing meant there was no chance of my sleeping. In my revved up state, I resented the constant commotion. I had big things to think about, two other kids to go home to, a father to care for long distance. I needed some quiet! So I broke the illusion of seclusion. I knocked on the wall next to her curtain.
"Excuse me. I'm your neighbor across the curtain. Can I help you?" I peeked around. She looked regal and glorious, patent leather skin and bare to her waist, with her newborn son tucked in her lap.
"Oh yes, please do come in." Her accent sounded of British aristocracy. "I don't know what to do. He simply won't eat and the nurses seem completely unconcerned about it. I'm just beside myself."
"Have you given him a bottle?"
"No, the nurses tell me I should have him stay with me all night and just keep trying, but it's been hours now and I'm so tired!"
"I couldn't help but hear what a tough day you've had. You know, I'm here with my third and I totally remember what you're going through. With my first baby, I was guilted into keeping her the whole night and I went home exhausted and grumpy. With my second and now this third one, I'm not shy about sending them to the nursery so I can get some sleep." I teasingly displayed my empty hands to show her I was baby-free. "You might consider sending him to the nursery so you can sleep a bit. You and he might both feel better about trying again in the morning. One or two bottles in the nursery won't hurt him, and you'll be able to enjoy him more and worry less if you've had some sleep."
I hoped my little lecture didn't come off as too pushy. But she just seemed so desperate for someone to tell her what to do with this new uncooperative little person. Her expression melted into relief.
"Do you really think that would be ok? Every time they come in the nurses tell me I'll be happier if I have my baby with me, but I think you're right. I can't function anymore." She reached for the nurse call button. "I'm so glad you came over. Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions? You seem like you know what you're doing and I'm so new to all of this."
Even after the baby had been taken to the nursery and calmed with a bottle, my new friend and I stayed up talking even later into the night. I learned that she was enrolled in an executive MBA program in London which required her to attend classes for ten days out of every month. She had three weeks before she needed to return to London -- without her baby. Fortunately, her mother-in-law would tend the baby in New York while she was gone, but she was determined to pump breast milk during those ten days. She owned her own textile business in New York but her own parents were famous doctors in Ghana, currently working pro bono for an international aid organization doing liver transplants. Her husband worked for a consulting firm and was rarely home. She lived in a world of international travel, multiple passports, languages and professions -- seemingly glamorous to me, but a world which had left her alone on the night of her baby's birth.
Back on my side of the curtain divide, long after the night shift of nurses had once again taken our blood pressure, I said a prayer of gratitude for my new Ghanaian/Londoner/New Yorker friend. Although my own ailing father remained in need a continent away, I had been able to help someone in the very next hospital bed. But beside the opportunity to get outside of myself, to drown my cares by getting involved with someone else's needs, I had been humbled into realizing that everyone goes through hard things. My own circumstances were no more demanding than my neighbor's, or, for that matter, any new mother who has trouble adjusting to the realities of a baby. As we parted the next morning -- with her well-rested and her son fed -- I gave her a hug and wished her good luck. She had a lot on her plate. But she was tough, and I could be too.
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