TW: c-section trauma

A shiny line crossed her lower abdomen, jagged and dark. The width varied, created by an uncertain scalpel. She dragged a finger along the uneven crease, her nail indenting further. The skin of her stomach seemed to push back, jarring her sliding finger, sticking every few millimeters. The scar felt fragile. Thin. As if it wouldn’t take much pressure to slice her open again. 

She shuddered at the memory, pulling away her shaking hand and her drifting thoughts. She moved it instead to rest on the swaddle of her sleeping baby and her surroundings came back into focus. She could feel the coarse park bench through her thin, flowing skirt. The sky was clear and the sun warmed the parts of her it hit through the fluffy deciduous branches, a slight breeze reminding the people it passed that it won’t be this warm for much longer. She took a deep breath, smelling the gyro place on the corner and soaking in the sounds of older children playing in the grass. She could feel their desperate hold on the summer. The growing wildness of children can never tame the passing of time. 

She glanced down at her baby, sound asleep in his tram, locked in place beside her. He had gotten so big already. Her other hand absently, gently, rubbed her stomach. She huffed at her automatic pull to engage with the moments of his birth. She felt drawn to her undoing, to the reminder of the day she was split open and ripped apart. There was no escaping these thoughts. There hadn’t been for months.

No one can prepare you for the moment your plans dissolve, where one minute you’re laying in a warm hospital bed, waiting patiently for the doctor to tell you it’s time to push so you can meet your beloved baby… then the next minute alarms are going off and you’re being rushed away on a rattling cart to a cold room, aware enough that something is not right, but not conscious enough to scream. Her reality had been ripped away from her so suddenly, just like her baby had been ripped from her womb. She remembered vaguely seeing her husband’s panicked face, the one where he thinks he’s being reassuring but there is clearly terror coming through his eyes.

She took a staggered deep breath, bringing herself to that park bench once again. Her fingers tapped the top of her thumb, alternating stimulus to ground her.

_Pointer–ring–middle–pinky, pointer–ring–middle–pinky. _

Her therapist had told her to take moments like these and delve into the emotion when she could, when she felt safe, to process the feeling instead of repressing it. The last, and only time, she had indulged so recklessly, her husband had found her curled up in a freezing bath, unable to remove herself from the water she had drawn hours prior. 

_Pointer–ring–middle–pinky, pointer–ring–middle–pinky. _

Her limbs had stopped responding after she revisited in her mind the surgery she never wanted to have, the sensation of her entire body going slack, of being dragged under involuntarily because her body had failed her and so medicine had to intervene, all the while mentally clawing toward a consciousness she would not obtain on her own. 

_Pointer–ring–middle–pinky, pointer–ring–middle–pinky._

She had remembered the sound of her own pleading, her endless cries turned to shrieks, as she felt nearly every part of what happened to her body. No one else could recall this, of course, because she was unconscious on an operating table. Silent and unmoving.

_Pointer–ring–middle–pinky, pointer–ring–middle–pinky._

She hadn’t slept for what felt like weeks, either due to having a newborn or the recurring night terrors that racked her entire being with a similar level of agony to the original event. Therapists and therapies, medications and treatments, were all a whirlwind as her husband desperately tried to find a wisp of the woman he married. Weeks of torment turned to months of hard work and healing. She was much better now.

_Pointer–ring–middle–pinky, pointer–ring–middle–pinky._

__

“An emergency c-section due to complications” they could not fully explain. Her eyelids fluttered as her fingers moved faster, the grip with her other hand tightening ever so slightly around the up and down of his steady, deep breathing. She took a moment to match his breaths until she could feel her heartbeat and fingers slow. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Once she felt stable, she gently settled both of her hands on the tops of her thighs, palms up, open and inviting to the energy of the light around her. She again grounded herself, rubbing her fingertips this time against the sleeve ends of her buttery soft sweater.

An abyss floated directly under her, threatening to swallow everything that might have once been her. But for now, she was again present, alive, and a mother.