My water broke in the pitch black of night, in those quiet hours when only insomniacs and very pregnant women are up and about. I had been staying at my parents at that point in my pregnancy due to the severe complications I had been experiencing. I stood to waddle my way through the dark hallway to the bathroom when it happened. An hour later, we made it to the hospital, got checked in and began the process of waiting, contracting and waiting some more.
That’s when I met my nurse.
None of her features stand out to me. I know she was wearing scrubs but I cannot recall the color. These may seem like trivial details to you but it’s evidence that I was distracted by the birthing process and what came out of her mouth. While I have no fashion sense myself, I notice colors, things that people wear and other supposedly trivial things. I inherited that from my grandmother. I remember what I wore on the first day of school every single year, picture days, random memories when someone says, “Do you remember that one time?” I reply, “Yeah, you were wearing that one shirt!” It’s just how my brain works. I remember nothing about this woman.
Except for her words and the way in which they were delivered.
It doesn’t seem that innocuous. Now. Years later, it seems trivial, like the missing details of the color of her scrubs or her hair. But it had such an affect on me at the time.
She came in the room to do some more nurse work and mentioned that she understood I was planning to place my baby for adoption. I stated that she was right. I was cautious in doing so. Mentioning adoption to various people over the course of my pregnancy had taught me that adoption was a volatile subject. Everyone had an opinion and absolutely no one had a problem hoisting those opinions and the weight of their personal baggage regarding that subject onto my already heavy shoulders. I remembering the inner cringe as I waited for this nurse’s opinion.
“I’m adopted. I love my adoptive parents more than anyone in the world. I don’t ever want to meet the woman who gave me away. You’re doing the right thing.”
I nodded.
And I shut down.
Her tone wasn’t loving. It was delivered in the short tone she used to bark most of her comments at me during her shift. I could tell, without a doubt, that she wanted as little to do with me as she wanted to do with her own birth mother. She placed us in the same category: unwanted, unworthy and undeserving of respect. I don’t think she ever once made eye contact with me though, after that point, I avoided looking up when she was in the room. Thankfully she was finished at seven o’clock that morning. Saved by the bell.
I was scared about my decision. At that point of carrying my daughter for 38 weeks and fighting since week 18 to keep her alive and well due to my kidney problems, I was as attached as I could possibly have been so someone I hadn’t quite met yet. I would have died if it meant that she would have been safe. And here was this woman nurse, piling her baggage on top of my fears, doubts and general misgivings.
We had been planning an open adoption. I had no desire for my daughter to ever not know who I was to her, that I had always loved her and always would. I was struggling enough with whether this was the right path to take. I felt alone and scared despite the presence of my mom, my best friend and eventually J and Dee in the room with me. I had been told nothing but glowing things about adoption from my facilitating agency. Now I doubted that I was supposed to have contact. And I felt judged by the nurse, as if I wasn’t good enough for my daughter to know at all. I began to question not whether or not I should place but if it was the right thing to stay in her life.
I still have flashes of anger that the nurse tainted my time in the hospital with her bit of overshare. Granted, there were worse moments of time in the hospital as the staff had no idea how to handle us or the concepts of open adoption. But this was the one that set the snowball of failure in motion. I hate that what she said still sticks in my mind to this day. To a mother who is facing her biggest fear, the letting go of a child that she still has in her womb, the subtle coercive undertones of that statement all but did me in. Who was I to want to parent my child? Who was I to desire contact with her family? Who was I at all?
As I write all of this, I realize what I hate most about that whole situation is that I still carry some of those questions with me, all these many years later. Not only with regard to adoption and openness but with the parenting I do now. Who am I? Who am I to think that, with all of my faults, that I’m doing the Munchkin any good? Who am I to think that I’m doing right by these boys? Who am I at all? These doubts follow me in every aspect of my life, from writing to photography to keeping house to friendships. It’s not all of the nurse’s fault; many others voiced similar things throughout my pregnancy. Her words stick with me, however, as they were delivered at a traumatic moment in a sterilized environment. I can hear her voice bouncing off the walls and floor and echoing through my mind as I sat in bed, unaware I could walk and move and do whatever else I wanted during the laboring process… unaware that I could choose to do whatever I wanted with regard to parenting or placement. Not only did I feel trapped by my association with the facilitating agency, I felt that I had no other option.
Who was I?
I don’t know her name. I figure she is still working the OB floor at the hospital in which I delivered the most beautiful baby girl to grace this planet. I can only hope that even if she hasn’t found peace with her situation that she is, at the very least, refraining from leaving her issues at the bedside of mothers who are already scared and alone, whether they’re planning to parent or place. And I hope that someday I’m able to put these doubts of mine behind me.
Because I know who I am. Most days.
_
This is another in my series of people who touched my adoption story that really had nothing to do with it but stick out so very vividly in my mind. The first was The Woman Upstairs.
