< Part 8 (Epilogue, For Me)

This is the final installment of M’s birth story, and also the most difficult to write. Although I will never forget the big picture of events, time has blurred some of the details. I also have a strong desire to put it behind me, allowing it to sink into the seas of an amnesiac mind.

But it is important to tell this story, even though it may be an imperfect rendering. It has had a profound impact on M, as well as me, and led to many discoveries we would not have had otherwise. It is not possible to understand where we are now, if you don’t understand where we came from.

The first few days after M’s birth were idyllic. She slept most of the time, and if she cried it was because she was either hungry or needed to burp. I was just beginning to not-so-secretly exult in the knowledge that I had one of those “easy” babies, when my milk came in and the shit hit the fan.

I had a very powerful letdown, and M had a hard time with this, choking and gagging while nursing. With some help from me, she seemed to handle it okay during the day, but as evening approached – the traditional newborn witching hour – things got worse and worse. I would put her to my breast, she would suck a few times, choke and splutter, and start screaming with rage. I would get her calmed down, and then she would scream because she was hungry.

We would repeat this cycle, over and over and over, for three, four, sometimes six hours. She would finally become so exhausted that she would nurse and pass out sometime around 3 or 4 AM. Once she fell asleep, it was like the spell was broken and the nighttime feedings went off without a hitch – she rarely even opened her eyes. The next morning she would nurse fine, and then things would slowly deteriorate throughout the day. As evening drew near, the knot of dread in my stomach would tighten and churn, and the screaming would begin anew.

This was not simply “newborn-baby-evening-fussiness”. This was all-out, inconsolable screaming. And it was not colic – even the pediatrician said it wasn’t colic. She was screaming because she was hungry, and yet she refused to nurse. Why? Why? WHY?!?!?!

I cannot tell you how many times I broke down and cried. How many times I screamed in frustration. How many times R held a screaming M in one arm, and tried to comfort his screaming wife with the other. Her behavior was all the more confusing because it was so inconsistent. Half the time she nursed with no problem, the other half it was a total nightmare. I can’t even recall all the lengths we went to comfort her – hour upon hour of walking, slinging, bouncing, pacing from one end of the house to the other.

I struggle to find words to accurately convey the misery, because to do that means I have to dig down, turn back, immerse myself in it … experience it again to try to translate it onto the page. I am not willing to do that. The despair, helplessness and hopelessness were just too intense. I don’t want to go there again. So I don’t know if I’m giving an accurate rendition of our experience, but trust me when I say it was really, truly awful.

I was desperate to figure out what was going on. The inconsistency of her behavior made it seem unlikely that it was a physical problem – from the very beginning, my instinct told me it was something else. It seemed directly connected to nursing – her mouth, swallowing, breathing – and I couldn’t help wondering if it was somehow related to the deep-suctioning she underwent just after birth. But that just didn’t make sense – at least not from the normal, mainstream, adult perspective of babies. She didn’t have the mental capacity to “remember” the deep suctioning, and surely she wasn’t emotionally mature enough to be traumatized by it. Right?

Although I couldn’t shake the feeling that my instinct was right, my rational mind told me I was being silly. Babies aren’t traumatized by their birth experiences. They’re just little lumps of squalling, hungry, tired, wet flesh. They don’t have the sophisticated level of consciousness required to suffer trauma. And so I went in search of other causes.

Perhaps she was upset by something in my diet, so I embarked on a total elimination diet – eating nothing but turkey, lamb, squash, pears, rice and potatoes for months on end. It didn’t work, but hey, I lost 60 pounds in three months. I took her to the doctor to see if it was reflux, and even put her on Zantac for a few weeks, although I hesitated every time I gave it to her … it just felt so wrong. I wondered if it was thrush, but nothing seemed to point in that direction.

I found no answers, the situation was not improving, and I felt utterly helpless. Despite my doubts, I returned over and over to the idea of the suctioning. I thought about what it must have been like for her, moments after birth, thrust into this world of bright lights, cold air, loud sounds, learning to breathe. And when she should have been held lovingly in her mama’s arms, instead she was on a table, surrounded by strangers, her arms and legs restrained, a hand clamping her head, tubes thrust over and over down her nose and throat. This would be an unpleasant experience for an adult, someone able to at least understand what was happening and why. But imagine what it must have been like for her. I would hold my screaming, hungry daughter in my arms, and weep for her.

As time passed, I became more and more convinced that this was the source of our problems. I felt that nursing and the powerful letdown were triggering her – reminding her in some way of the suctioning. Perhaps she didn’t remember it in the way that we as adults remember, but it happened to her and the experience was stored somewhere in her body and mind.

To make matters worse, I felt horrible guilt for my obliviousness to her experience. When the suctioning was happening, I was sitting on the bed, celebrating the end of the pain, congratulating myself on my natural birth, and thinking about taking a nap. It didn’t even occur to me to consider what she was going through, that maybe she was suffering. Rationally, I don’t believe I should castigate myself for this. M is my first baby, and I had never spent prolonged amounts of time with newborns before her birth. And they’re certainly not portrayed in our culture as sentient, conscious beings, capable of reacting to and being affected by their experiences. But emotionally, the knowledge that she was suffering and I wasn’t there for her, was blind to her pain, tore me to shreds. And so I wept for myself as well – the guilt worming into my heart, the drumbeat of failure beating in my head, my daughter’s screams an endless accusation.

And what to do? I couldn’t go back in time and undo the suctioning, although I cried and cried about it, and mentally flogged myself for not researching meconium staining, for not knowing if the suctioning was really necessary. Me, the person who prepares for everything … I had let her down.

I teetered on the edge of depression, surviving on hardly any sleep, stretched to the breaking point physically and emotionally. I would watch the hands of the clock drag by, knowing she would be hungry again soon, and dreaded the thought of nursing her. Nursing was supposed to be this amazing, loving, comforting, bonding experience, but instead it felt like I was torturing her every time I put my nipple to her mouth. But what could I do? She needed to eat, and I was committed to breastfeeding. A few times I tried pumping and giving her a bottle, but she just screamed through that too. I became a prisoner in my own home – needing to nurse frequently enough that I couldn’t go out without facing the prospect of doing it in public. But I was terrified of the screaming, so it was easier to just stay home and deal with it there, dreading the feedings as they marched towards me, one after the other, no relief, no end in sight. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months.

The pediatrician dismissed my concerns. She was gaining weight and seemed the picture of health. I could see his assessment of me – new mom who was all freaked out over nothing. This infuriated me, and I refused to see him anymore. Finally, out of desperation and after much urging, I took her to a pediatric chiropractor. The woman we saw did chiropractic adjustments, in addition to craniosacral therapy (CST). I had never heard of CST before, and viewed it simply as an adjunct to the chiro care. Sometimes M would cry, and the doctor assured me that was normal – the CST was releasing her emotions.

I also read an article about crying in arms. I was thunderstruck by this concept – that sometimes babies need to cry, to release trauma, frustration, emotions. It was like a giant puzzle piece clicked into place, and for the first time, I gave myself permission to fully believe that the suctioning traumatized M. I also stopped trying to constantly silence her. When she cried, I ran down the list of possible causes: wet, hungry, gassy, tired, pain. If the answer to all these was no, I took a deep breath, held her in my arms, and just let her cry. This is one of the most gut-wrenching things I’ve ever done. The fury contained in her tiny body took my breath away. It was like she sensed that I was finally okay with her letting go, and she flailed her arms, hitting and kicking me, and screamed. I felt so helpless, worried that I was doing the wrong thing, and tried to comfort her, but she didn’t want it, pushed me away. I touched her head and she screamed like I had never heard before. I thought of the doctor, restraining her head, and touched it again, gently, so gently. She arched her back, took a deep breath, and raged. My eyes filled with tears as I thought of how much pain she had experienced in her short life, and how badly I wanted to take it away. I tried not to take her anger personally, but it was hard. Every few minutes I would notice my hunched, defensive shoulders, and remind myself to relax my body, take deep breaths, create a safe space for her.

And here I am, in that place again. I tried to avoid it, but I can’t, and am crying even now. I never understood until I became a mother, the depth of the connection to your child, how heart-wrenching their suffering is. I would give anything to go back and take it myself, spare her, keep her whole and untouched. I want to put a spell on her, protect her from harm forever, but I know I can’t. How will my heart survive the bumps and bruises, slights and insults, broken hearts and mistakes that are to come? How?

Although it felt like hours, I don’t think she ever cried longer than 30 minutes. She would start to calm, the sobs coming slower, her chest heaving, and she would finally turn her head to me and nurse. And then sleep – deep, healing sleep. And I would hold her in my arms, not sure where we were going next, but fierce in my determination to help her.

As the weeks passed, we continued seeing the chiropractor and doing crying in arms as needed, and I noticed slow, subtle improvement. The intensity of crying while nursing lessened, but oddly, the frequency increased. Now she fussed at every feeding (except nights), although it wasn’t the inconsolable screaming from before. I became an expert at nursing on the move – walking, bouncing, rocking – anything to keep M eating and not fussing. And that was as good as it got. We just didn’t seem to be making any further progress.

When M was about 4 months old, my yoga teacher recommended a different chiropractor, and I decided it was worth a try. Anything was worth trying at this point. She was different from any chiropractor I’d ever worked with, focusing on upper cervical correction, believing that the rest of the body would fall into alignment on its own from there. She also did CST. And she resolved our nursing problems in one visit. One visit. I was stunned, to say the least, as well as overjoyed.

I was finally able to sit down and nurse my daughter. I could go places and nurse without creating a scene. I no longer felt like my breast was some sort of medieval torture device. I didn’t wish for time to stand still, or dread nursing anymore. Our lives were changed.

Around this time, M’s gassiness reached new heights, and I was spending the nights being kicked, instead of sleeping. A friend had taken her son to a massage therapist (Kelly) who specialized in CST and SomatoEmotional Release (SER), and I decided to make an appointment to see if she could help with the gassiness.

To make a long story very short, Kelly did help with M’s digestive issues (although they’re not entirely gone), but even more importantly, she furthered the work started by the two chiropractors. I took M to see Kelly regularly (and still do), and in those early days she had numerous emotional “releases”. Again, I am at a loss as to how to describe these experiences – this time because I simply don’t know the words to explain what happened. But I felt so incredibly connected to M during those sessions, and also felt her pain and rage viscerally. I remember one session when I got the very clear feeling that she was angry with me – angry because I hadn’t been there for her, hadn’t protected her. She was sobbing and thrashing, and I held her to me and cried, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry … I’m so sorry I didn’t protect you.” And she took a few deep, shuddering breaths, looked up at me through tear-filled eyes, and smiled.

Somehow, in ways that I don’t fully understand, those sessions allowed both of us to work through the trauma of M’s birth, to process and release it, and draw ourselves close together in healing. The last time M had a big emotional release, I sensed a difference. Instead of anger and rage, there was intense grief – so powerful that I was overcome by the depth of her sadness, and found myself crying with her. Again, I was seized by the thought of how unfair it was for my daughter to feel so much pain at such a young age. Thankfully, I think this was the last stage in her mourning, the final letting go, as there have been no more emotional releases since then.

Even though there are still times when I rail against what happened to us, the unfairness and cruelty, I stop and remind myself that without this, we might never have stumbled upon CST. And I have come to believe that CST is a truly amazing thing – a gift, a lesson. It is the reason M and I suffered through all that pain, so we could learn about CST, bring it into our lives, and have it forever as a tool.

I have been so profoundly touched by this experience that I feel the need to somehow give back, repay the universe, and am considering a career change that would allow me to use CST to help mothers and babies. But above all I’m grateful. I look at my extraordinarily content baby, who has a joy and happiness to her that is so beautiful it’s sometimes hard for me to comprehend. And I know that she is not carrying that pain around inside her anymore, to rot and fester, weighing her down physically and emotionally. She is finally free and full of light.

Part 1 (Preparation)
Part 2 (Warming Up)
Part 3 (Ready! Set! Wait!)
Part 4 (Ready! Set! Wait Some More!)
Part 5 (Are We There Yet?)
Part 6 (I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I can)
Part 7 (A New Life Begins)
Part 8 (Epilogue, For Me)
Part 9 (Epilogue, for my daughter)