Baby Blue

The hustle and bustle of the busy train I sat on from Brighton to London, on my way to the hospital, mimicked my elation and the butterflies I felt inside my belly. It could be from the sheer excitement or from the baby that I was carrying kicking around inside it.

I was 25 weeks into my pregnancy. The nursery had been painted with huge clouds from the bottom of the walls to the ceiling. It seemed to be the safest choice. We didn’t know yet if our unborn son would like trucks or animals more. Who was he going to be? A reflection of his father, obsessed with all things stereotypically manly or a mini me, an animal lover? A perfect mix of the two or his own unique person? We had never been more excited to meet the little one. It had took us 5 excruciatingly long years of trying to get here.

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The hospital walls were eerily too white. Surrounding us were green accent walls. Perhaps it was once the shade of green that reminded people of spring-time and hope, but it had faded so much that the hue was insipid. Stands for intravenous drips and monitors welcomed me while dispensers for sanitizers and rubber gloves were ubiquitously scattered throughout the room. The place was scrupulously spotless, a bit too clean for me. I bled and bled profusely. Flood of blood and a copious amount of clots in the toilet had been a regular occurrence throughout my piercingly painful pregnancy but this was different. What felt like a thousand failed blood transfusions later, the doctor told me the words I had been dreading. It was time to let go. Bleak silence hung in the atmosphere. The room was as devoid of aesthetic as I was of hope. I lay there, teary-eyed, under a pale blue blanket, about to deliver what was supposed to be our first child only to bury him a few moments later. The epidural was injected and I was induced. Ready to deliver. But how can you ever be ready to deliver your dead child?

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The next few weeks seemed to go by as slowly as the leaves fell swaying to the floor in a dreary autumn. It was impossible to shrug off the fact that I had gone in with a bump but returned from the hospital without a baby. Post-partum depression without a baby in my arms, who would have otherwise made it feel all worth it, was worse. I would have dreams of a perfect world where we gleefully brought him home, gave him his first bath and I read my childhood favorite bedtime story to him. At one point, the dreams turned into hallucinations during the day. I had begun manifesting my thoughts into life-like images of what I yearned so painfully to be real. It felt real. Almost too real. I would see him sleeping peacefully in his cot, the milky white clouds painted a serene sky above him. He was swaddled in the softest, coziest cerulean baby blue blanket that had been passed down to him from when his father was a baby. I could hear his cries echo throughout the house. And my woeful cries would follow.

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“He’s not real! He’s dead!” my husband wailed out one day. It had been months and my hallucinations had only gotten worse, they had consumed me. Friends and family were getting increasingly concerned for my mental well-being and my husband had been holding onto dwindling hope that it would get better overtime. I was convinced my baby was here with me. He was real. Omnipresent everywhere I went. I saw him smiling in his rocker, napping in his cot, crawling on the kitchen floor, riding a hammock in one of the lush trees in the backyard. He was watching over his mother.

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“Mama”, I heard him call out for me. It was 2 in the morning. His voice was distinct and coming from his room. His room that was left untouched because I didn’t allow any changes to be made after we lost him. I had no control of my body after I heard my child. Almost like an automatic reaction, I jumped frantically out of bed and ran towards him. There he was. Trying to climb out of his cot. He was reaching out for me when he saw me. I nearly tripped over the many packs of unopened diapers that were laying around on the floor while rushing to him. The persistent pain that had been visible on my face all these days switched to an instant overjoyed smile as I bolted to where the cot was. My precious, quiet baby lay there, still. Sleeping peacefully at first glance but as I stepped closer I noticed he lay too still. An instant gush of tears streamed down my dried-out face from my blank, rheumy eyes.

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I never got to meet you but like how your tiny footprints would have imprinted onto wet cement, you will always be etched in my mind. I never got to carry you but the crooks in my arm feel the lack of your warmth. I never got to cuddle you but somehow my shoulder feels burdened without your head resting on it. I never got to soothe your crying and now I cannot stop mine.

These thoughts drown out any other in my mind as I look on to the baby birds nestled in their mother’s care up in the tall oak tree in the park. Leaves of shamrock, fern, basil and every other shade of green on the towering trees shield park-goers from the July sun. Rims of water leisurely spread on the glistening lake as the baby ducks followed their mother in a strictly synchronized manner.

As I walked out, the sun set and a crimson blanket of warmth and chilly breeze enveloped the park, another day ended with the fainting sounds of laughing children behind me - none of which were mine.