The day before I found out I was pregnant, Rich and I were driving north to my dad's house in Petaluma. We exited the freeway near the waterfront and, as we approached the stoplight, saw a mother duck and her ducklings crossing the road in front of us. To my astonishment, cars continued onward – maybe unaware of the duck and her babies, but maybe not – and one by one, in slow motion it seemed, hit the ducklings.
The mother duck did not turn around, hesitate, or stop, but hurried on her way as quickly as she could, leading her babies toward the water on the other side of the street.
I could not believe what was happening. I screamed, "GET OUT!! GET OUT!!" to Rich, "DO SOMETHING!!" He scrambled out of his seatbelt and dashed into the street, holding up his hand to stop traffic. The mother duck was halfway across the street by this time and Rich slid along beside her with his hand out until she and her remaining babies reached the other side.
She had started her crossing with a dozen ducklings and had less than 5 by the time she finished.
I had my head down on the dash and was sobbing uncontrollably when Rich got back in the car. "WHY DIDN'T THEY STOP?!" I cried. "DIDN'T THEY SEE THE BABIES?!" I wept and wept and, even when we reached my dad's house, continued to weep.
This was the first time since anorexia had stolen my emotions that I'd felt anything so deeply. It had been just over 6 months since my last hospitalization and the world and my life were taking on dimension.
I was well into my illness when 9/11 happened and my routine didn’t even falter. I watched the news from the gym that night, the next morning, and each morning and night thereafter. I was affected by the tragedy but it didn't puncture my heart the way the ducklings did. It couldn't. There was no getting through to me then.
The day after we watched the ducklings cross, I stood in a bathroom stall gaping at a positive pregnancy test. After two more positive tests, I called Rich down from the floor above and we met in the hallway outside my office. I couldn't even begin to process the fact I was carrying a child – not with the fear of a heart attack still so present. "I can't be," I kept saying, "It's not possible." And I called my doctor.
I walked a lot during my pregnancy in order to process the changes going on in my life. I had spent years in motion and wasn't able to be still with my thoughts or feelings. During those months, I walked through my fear of losing the baby. I walked through the fact that our first sonogram showed two heart beats and the second showed only one. I walked through the positive triple-screen test indicating a high chance of Downs Syndrome. I walked through the subsequent genetic analysis and termination counseling. I walked through my anger at a stranger suggesting I take the life of my child because she might not be "right." I walked through my helpless fear that our child might be born with the heart condition associated with Downs. I walked to give myself the strength I needed to deal with whatever was to come.
Adela was born with meconium poisoning to the base of her trachea. Upon her delivery, a rush of doctors and nurses entered the room at the urgent call of the midwife. They skirted her tightly wrapped little body through my line of vision before racing her to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where she would spend her first days. Amidst the chaos in the delivery room and the emotions streaming from my mother, sister, and Rich, I called out to the doctor who had hovered over her before she was rushed out, "Does she have Downs Syndrome?" He looked at me in total surprise and said, "No, she doesn't."
I sat with Adela over the next couple of days as she went from incubation and oxygen support to resting in my arms with needles and monitors taped to her tiny little feet. One of the nurses told us that someone must have been watching over our child because...eventually...they were able to give her a clean bill of health and release her to our care.
Knowing this child now, with all her feistiness and charm, I can't believe I ever worried about her. But, I did (I still do!). I felt every emotion a pregnant woman and new mother would feel. I felt everything. Tidal waves crashed over me day and night – an overabundant rawness caused by this tiny new creature who insisted, soon after leaving the NICU, on craning her neck to look around. We called her "Turtle" for the forceful way she took in the world.
Like every new mother, I was awash in the privileges and pains of caring for a newborn. I didn't shower, I hardly dressed, I learned how to breast feed, and I loved this precious child with that indescribable instinctive ache. It took but her first intake of breath to render me second in my life, and I was happy to surrender the top position.
Soon enough I was back on my feet, with my baby strapped to my front, taking walks through the neighborhood: processing, processing, processing. I introduced her absorbent little eyes to the latticework of leaves overhead; her pink little ears to the sound of dogs barking and cars driving past; her cushiony little body to the rhythm of moving through the streets on foot. I needed to breathe that outside air. The movement, the cold winds of winter, the changing colors of the sky – I needed those things to help me understand who I was and what I was to do.
And I felt, with my body full and strong from the pregnancy, a sense of pride in what I'd done. In just over a year I'd gone from the naked hollowness of my illness to a grounded force of female power. The transformation was exact and it was complete.
But it wasn’t permanent.
Time slowly brought me back to the unseen periphery of anorexia. I shed all of my pregnancy weight quickly and some of my struggles began anew. Because I couldn’t find peace in stillness, I fell headlong into an exercise regimen that would drain my energy. I was back to negotiating, structuring, and balancing just to stay on top of things. Silence and rest were alien and uncomfortable to me. I needed motion to be. Just to be.
I still need motion, but it isn't the drug it once was. I still need fresh air, and I still need the perspective that only elevation can give me. I need to feel my heart beating and I need to move through the space I now know we all share.
During my illness I was alone in the world. As close as I came to people, they didn't exist within my universe. They were holograms of beings I didn't care to know. Now I see that the ground I walk on, you walk on also.
Starting this blog has centered me back in my body in a way I haven't experienced since I carried my newborn on my chest. Letting those years take up their rightful place in my life has made me bigger, whole, more complete. When I was pregnant and then the mother of a teeny tiny person, I owned the space my body required. It was mine, and I deserved it.
I hadn’t realized that some of that ownership had ebbed until I was walking toward my office today and felt strangely filled with all the pieces of myself. Even the shameful pieces that I've made walk in my shadow for all these years.
This time, the deserving feeling was not contingent upon my importance as a mother. No – today, while walking along 3rd Street in downtown Chico, I was just a young woman on her way to work, breathing in the cold morning air and looking up at the pale autumn sky. I was taking up all the space I need in this world, and I was proud of it.
~ Katie
