The Way She Was Born

Trigger Warning: Mentions of car crashes, blood, bodily fluids, PTSD.

You will probably never believe this story, even though I lived through it, I still have trouble believing what happened that day. I'll never forget the day I met her, little Luna-Bug. It was June 2nd, 2023, around 4 am, I was woken up by an incredible pain in my pelvis, and the sensation that I needed to use the bathroom. The way my body felt; was not right, my back felt like it was being pinched, my mind was cloudy as if I were in a fog, I had a strong pain across my stomach, and my breathing was slightly irregular. My body began to push and I could feel a sense of panic starting to fill my body, but not before my water fell out of my body like a water balloon. 

Seconds after it broke, water splattering all over my feet, legs, and hardwood floor, I caught my daughter's head in my hand. I screamed for my fiance, red in the face, that small sense of panic now the only feeling I had as I waited for him to find me in the bathroom. When he saw me, fight or flight kicked in for him, as he put us in our SUV and took off for the hospital, which was less than five minutes away. He takes the off-ramp for the highway, and our daughter is completely born in the passenger seat of our family's SUV. For a split second, the world is right. My daughter, albeit still sticky and a bit gross, is finally in my arms after 9 long months...

I look down, she's unresponsive. Her skin is starting to become cold to the touch. Something is wrong. I didn't register the next sentence I spoke until the words were hanging in the air like mustard gas, "Her umbilical cord is wrapped around her neck." Her father tells me to pull it away as fast as delicately as possible. 

I do as I'm told, with tears and dread filling my entire body, I slip my fingers between the cord and her neck. She cries out. Immediately. Relief begins to replace the panic, “Oh thank god” I breathe out silently.  Our vehicle has now come to a stop at a red light, but the sense of dread, and almost death of our daughter has us both in a state of panic. I look around to the standstill of cars, no one has a green light yet. Before the little voice in the back of his head can tell him to wait, my fiance hits both the gas and horn as he goes through the red light. 

Nothing could have prepared us for anything that happened after this. 

Less than five feet from making it to the other side less than two minutes from the hospital, a Monte Carlo accelerates to 45 miles per hour, T-boning our Dodge Journey. He hit the back driver-side tire and sent our car flipping through the air. The only instinct I had, the only way I could protect the less-than-a-minute-old infant laying almost limp in my arms was to curl my body around hers. I didn’t understand the impact, only that my daughter could die, I tucked her against my chest and allowed psychics to ping-pong me around the interior of our car. When the car finally landed, we were able to get out of our now-totaled vehicle, an angel of a human being put all three of us into his car and drove us the rest of the way to the ER. 20 Nurses and doctors took our daughter from her father as I was rushed into the ER. I don’t remember much from then, being asked a million times if I was okay, having blood and IV fluids being attached to my arms and bed frame. But no sign of my daughter. 

I spent four hours lying in that ER bed, a female nurse checking to make sure I was going to be okay, and a male nurse holding my hand and telling me everything was going to be okay. But I still hadn’t been told if Luna was okay. Wondering out loud, begging every nurse who walked in to tell me where she was, if she was okay, and how she doing. At one point they came to take breastmilk, but still wouldn’t tell me anything, and I was still in a state of shock. I was moved to three different rooms before they finally brought her in. Three nurses rolled in a cart with a cot on the top, covered in pink. With a little 6-pound baby lying in a swaddled blanket. I think my heart skipped a beat when they handed her to me.

I had never seen the most beautiful little girl. A full head of dark brown curls covered her entire head. Beautiful olive skin, covered in the thinnest little dark black baby hair. The smallest button-nose complete opposite of her mother's, big gorgeous brown eyes that always found mine. Her big gummy smile, had me crying every single time in the hospital. I have never been the same since that day. People, mothers mostly, talk about how the birth of their child(ren) changed them, for the better or worse. But the day my daughter smiled at me, I will never forget that day. It’s etched into my brain, and I’m reminded every day that one wrong move, and she wouldn’t be here over a year later. And each day, I get to meet a new version of her. 

When she started to roll onto her tummy, or when she started to crawl, the day she said 'Mamma', or when she walked for the first time. Every single day I get to meet her all over again, and I'll get that enormous pleasure every single day I get to be her mother. I wouldn't be the mother I am today without her, or the person I am without what we both went through. My therapist says we trauma bonded, the PTSD we experienced, even though she may not remember it, there is a possibility that she might remember, or have latent fears one day. And I’ll be there to help her through, every step of the way.