I became pregnant with Suvir in the fall of 2016. I was thrilled that I did not have gestational diabetes as I did during the pregnancy of Rihaan, my firstborn who ended up in the NICU 4 hours after a natural birth due to neonatal hypoglycemia and then stayed there for 4 days denying me of precious mommy-baby early bonding days.

So, I turned my focus to enjoying my pregnancy. We did a gender reveal photoshoot on a gorgeous spring afternoon. Voila! We were having another baby boy! I was so happy! How exciting! Two brothers only 2.5 years apart..they would grow up together, play together, go to school together and just basically, be each other’s rock, BFF for life!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once I knew the gender of the baby, I started prepping and decorating a little for his arrival. My friends also threw me a cute little sprinkle!

 

 

At the same time, I turned my focus to prepare Rihaan to be promoted to big brother status. I worried how he would cope without me for 2 or 3 nights when my husband and I both would be in the hospital? Would he be comfortable staying with his Nana and Nanima (maternal grandfather and grandmother) for that period of time since they usually lived half-way across the world for up to 11 months at a time? Will I be able to spend enough time with him upon my return home with the new baby? How will my husband and I manage with two little ones when it seemed as if we had our hands full with our 2-year-old?

The one advice I received from many second time moms, was to devote my focus and attention to my older one as much as possible after the baby’s arrival. “It would reinforce a sense of security for him that mommy still loved him just as much”, is what they told me.

I realized that most of my worries were well founded and within the normal limits of allowable anxiety for a growing family. What I didn’t realize, is that I was taking the process of birthing and what followed it for granted. And why shouldn’t I have done that? After all, I was already withheld once from a new mom experience and this time I made sure that wouldn’t happen by emphasizing “bonding” in my birth plan. Even the hospital had changed post-partum protocol since the last time I had delivered there. Now, they would no longer whisk the baby away to the nursery to perform first vitals, bath, etcetera. In fact, they had initiated performing all of that agenda right next to mommy, never separating baby from mommy.

So when my water broke around 2am on June 23^rd, in a deja-vu-esque fashion to when I delivered my first born, I already knew what was happening. I knew I wouldn’t be dilated and laboring for a while and so I didn’t need to rush over to the hospital immediately. I got my rest and made my way over with my husband to the hospital by 7am. On the elevator ride up, we took a picture similar to the one we had taken during my first delivery 2.5 years ago.

I got into a room and sure enough, I was only trickling fluid and not dilated at all. Sunay made his way down to the cafeteria for my last meal as a mother of one before my OB would come in and order some Cytotec to start moving things along. From, the meal, to the onset of laboring process, everything was eerily similar to my first delivery.

However, this time, by the time I needed the relief from the epidural the most, it had stopped working and I found myself rising up to the challenge of facing intense labor pain. This was definitely different than my first delivery! I endured intense labor pain! I begged, and I am not exaggerating, I begged for additional pain relief. I begged to use my pain pump but I was told I could not because it wouldn’t allow me to feel my legs and push. Anyways, if I consider myself fortunate in the face of an ineffective epidural; unlike my first delivery, I didn’t have to push for 2 hours! 10 good pushes and out he was!

Suvir was born at 6:06PM. His cry was gurgly (what I now know as stridorous). A quick bulb suction later, my husband cut the umbilical cord and the nurse placed my little peanut onto my chest.

Before I could even look at him properly, before I could even touch him with all the affection in the world, before I could take the focus away from my pain and focus on his existence, before it was even more than a second, my motherly instinct of protecting my newborn and knowing that something was wrong had already kicked in! I noticed he was turning blue and pale and he had stopped crying and I immediately called for help. Instead of whisking the baby away to weigh him, the nurse whisked him away on to a tiny table too far away from the reach of my left arm. Before my baby could even enter this world and cry properly to announce his arrival, he had already “coded” for respiratory arrest and an army of doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists stormed my delivery room trying to save my newborn son. My husband held my right hand, the nurse who helped deliver Suvir held my left hand. I kept asking both of them what was wrong while I was still sprawled with my legs open barely remembering that I had just delivered and that I was a bloody mess and my OB had delivered the placenta and was stitching me up. We watched helplessly as Suvir was intubated, not once but twice. We watched helplessly and I was sure that his chest did not rise for what felt like an eternity. A million thoughts went in and out of my head. I looked at my husband who could do nothing more than ask me to look at him. With a crackling voice and nervous exasperation, he said to me unconvincingly that “he (our baby) will be okay”.

In the very next moments after birth, Suvir was intubated. I could not even see what he looked like, let alone hold him. I don’t think I even fully knew and understood what intubation meant. “Why is his face covered in all this tape?”, I remember asking myself. This was my first picture with him!

Remember what I said to start this story? Don’t take life for granted because it will flip upside down in a split second. This moment in time is that split second in my life. I went from experiencing immense labor and delivery pain to pure joy at the birth of my child to complete heartbreak in a matter of seconds! This moment in time turned my life upside down. My life, my baby’s life, my family’s life changed forever in these moments!

I was going to be to be robbed of a bonding experience for a lot more than a few days this time around. Not just that, I was going to be denied any chance to catch my breath, or to let my guard down, or to heal my body and mind from the pregnancy and the delivery. But you know what, a mother endures whatever is thrown at her no matter how horrendous it is. But what a mother cannot endure are the ripples of these denials that spill onto her family and little did I know that this was the just the start of many such experiences that weaken you from the core and rip your soul out of your body.