#250
One late afternoon in August, Andy arrived at the house unexpected. He had decided to move to Laramie, Wyoming
to join several other of our friends and separate himself from the
pregnancy. I was over 5 months pregnant.
Aware of my decision to give birth to our baby, he decided to move over 2,000
miles away in order to find himself. He
moved himself away from me but was still among my friends. His fear was we’d end out in a track house in
Bridgeport, unhappy with 2.5 children and no room for either of our real
selves. No room to be smart or creative,
just trapped in a lower middle class world neither of us could flourish
in. And although he understood I did not
want an abortion, he thought I was wrong in my decision and he needed to go
away.
Several weeks later Andy made it to Laramie and called to have our friend Lynne join
him. She had been living with me and she left our little nest and drove
out to reunite with him. Loneliness
tucked in all around my edges.
At 18 weeks my mother drove me to Queens to have an abortion, we
believed that I was still in my first trimester. But after I was examined the doctor determined
that I was almost 19 weeks and I could not agree to a celene abortion. Mom and I drove home, stuck in NY traffic,
trying to cross the Queens Borough Bridge and we talked, we shared feelings,
experiences and began engaging in a long conversation that lasted many
years. Adoption was introduced into the
discussion as I entered my seventh month.
We talked openly about the process, assuming that it was now the best
option. My mother knew she was not in
any condition to raise a baby, the household was unstable and depressed, and
she frowned up the idea of bringing a baby into the mix. I had such fear of trying to make it on my
own with a baby, I was already suffering from awful anxiety attacks and
aloneness was not my forte. I continued to interact with the community, participate
in functions with my family and friends, go to movies, concerts, vote for the
first time, live my life in the open, but I knew I would release her in the
end.
I met Georgia around this time. Georgia was a social worker who did
counseling with pregnant teens. She was
French and Greek, came to Norwalk as a child with her parents, learned English
quickly and helped her father run a business while she went to school. She was the first person to tell me that
immigrant story; she was big and smart and had giant amounts of empathy and
compassion. She was quick to understand
where I was coming from and how much I had closed down, shut off in order to
deliver this baby. Georgia filled a room
up. She was spirited and European and
eccentric and became a role model, she helped me realize that I too was big and
filled up a room and I was dramatic.
These were all things she wanted me to feel good about, she wanted to
help me think about a future, a wonderful exciting future after this chapter of
my life was complete. This was the language that pregnant teens were given in
order to keep them looking towards relinquishing their child and not backing
out. But what I felt most was shame and
I was not quite sure why. What I felt
was dread and sorrow. And I imagined
being alone with a baby in a poor apartment with not enough heat and dirty
misty snow.
I was electric and I pulled people in, gathering people around me,
creating safe rooms for others to think new ideas in. And yet, I was melodramatic and loud and got
in the way all the time and there I was very pregnant, volatile. Instead of growing away from my family and
depending more on my strengths and talents, I was believing more and more that
I was organically bad, that my sexuality, my attraction to males was proof
positive that I was not good, not moral and not sexy or loving enough to keep neither
my father nor my baby’s father near. Relinquishing
her was the best act I could chose, so that she would go to live in a family
where she would be raised by healthy normal people and not be hurt by her
biological family.
I knew enough about nurture and nature to want her adopted by smart
creative parents. I thought her adoptive mom would be a painter and raise her
surrounded by color. Andy was brilliant;
everyone knew it, so I wanted her family to be smart, very smart. The adoption agency assured me that they
would match my baby with the right family.
They interviewed both our families, although Andy’s mother swore he
probably wasn’t the father, that I had many lovers and refused to be
interviewed. I was irate; I realized
Andy’s mother hated me with as much energy as my mother hated Andy. Years later I realized Mom did not hate
Andy. She felt betrayed by him because
she felt she had treated him as one of her own all those years. She felt he’d walked out on the family, not
just me.
She was due on November 28th and came on December 13th,
St. Lucia’s day, day of light. I lay in
bed watching my clock, a loud click every time a minute passed, counting
minutes between contractions, not wanting to go, too scared to wake Paul who
was bringing me to the hospital. But
once my water broke I went into Mom’s room and she called Paul and off we went
into the grey morning snow.
The obstetrician who cared for me during the whole process, who
delivered her was Dr. Shapiro, a young attractive, 6’2’’ dark haired solid
man. I was madly in love with him. I would do whatever he’d tell me to do and
knew that he would take care of me. Very
normal transference took place. I fantasized he would run away with me when the baby was born. I knew it was a fantasy. I spent hours thinking up wild stories on what
would happen to save me from letting go of her.
But after sixteen hours of labor, after coming in and out of a fog in
the delivery room I saw her head crown.
The medical team thought she might not fit through my birth canal so
they increased the anesthetic and forced me to sleep at the final push. She was born and removed from me. I could hear her cry and I could hear them talking
about her and saying how beautiful she was.
Dr. Shapiro leaned over me, congratulated me on a job well done and told
me he was going to remove me from the room, not show her to me, not let us
bond. It was thought to be easier for
both of us. Several hours later I was
moved into a room with two other women.
One woman‘s baby was born addicted to smack, the other’s was born
premature with a damaged heart. The
doctors were trying to move him to Columbia Presbyterian. Both women were in distress, my automatic,
middle child, take care of everyone else, clicked in immediately and I brushed
away attention to myself and helped the others.
My elder brothers were my biggest family support. Michael, who was falling into addiction and
suffered badly from on-going back pain, tried hard to do right by me. He bought me my own sewing machine. He brought me to so many doctor’s
appointments the nurses thought he was the father and wasn’t he great,
etc. I took care of his son, Jason,
after school. We made each other laugh
and kept each other company.
And Paul, who was newly married and trying to figure out what to do with
his life maintained his role as my close companion. We loved each other deeply. He drove me to the hospital and stayed with me
until the nurses kicked him out because he was “my brother not my husband.”
After visiting hours the night Andrea Laura was born, Michael flirted
his way past the nurses with flowers. He
came in my room and tossed my robe at me. “Come on, let’s go look at her” I got
up out of bed, took his arm and we walked slowly down to the nursery where two
babies lay in small tanks. The first was
the one pound preemie, tiny and tied with tubes and oxygen under his nose. And the other was my large baby girl with
lots of black hair and the look of a two month old: aware, conscious and
alive. Mike and I stared, she looked
like a Whiton baby, the nurses remarked how beautiful she was and slow tears
began to run out of both of our eyes.
“Lindy, I wish I could do it, I wish I could bring you both to live with
me and Jason. I can’t.” I knew he was telling me the truth. I didn’t know how bad things actually were
but I knew.
Over the next 24 hours I signed my name a few dozen times to relinquish
my rites as a mother. People came and
went, all in awe of her. I named her
Andrea Laura after her father and my maternal grandmother. Her birth certificate was delivered to me, a
keepsake.
An old family friend brought her clothes for the nurses to dress her in
while she was in the hospital: a gesture of kindness towards both of us. Many could not visit, could not understand why
I was letting her go, but others came and comforted me.
I sent a telegram to Lynne
telling her the baby was born and healthy.
Andy received the telegram and walked through snow to give it to
Lynne. She opened it, read it, and
handed it to him. He read it, threw it
in the trash can and walked out. Neither
of them replied to me. They came to Connecticut for Christmas and I saw Lynne
for a half hour, but Andy for 5 minutes.
Lynne told me about that day.
Home I went, rolled out past the nursery, not able to take a final
glance, just having to cut, one last severe cut between my head and my heart,
stopping myself from feeling this huge pain jabbing in the chest, a hole carved
with a dull knife, and the sense that arms were squeezing me together so I
would not split.
What no one explained to me was that relinquishing my baby, not nursing,
not bonding would cause my body and my hormonal system to believe my baby was
dead. It was the same action and my
physical responses would be the same. I
did not understand why no matter how hard I tried to just go on with my young
life, my body would not cooperate. My
breasts continued to make milk, even as I tried to go off to college six weeks
later and I felt disoriented, dizzy and confused a lot of the time. Eventually this stopped, but never was it
explained to me that I was living through grief.
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