Can You Feel This?

by Julie Orringer

Some women have a hard time letting go, the anesthesiologist says. Some women have issues with control.

What they said in childbirth class: If you gave birth by C-section, you wouldn’t bond with your baby. He’d be whisked off to the NICU at once. Laid in an incubator. Threaded with tubes. Fed formula. You might not see him again for eighteen hours. When at last you did, he wouldn’t recognize your scent.

No one’s treating him like a premature baby. You do not question this. Your first mistake.

If you can’t manage it, if you can’t do this first thing, how will you do everything else? How will you do any of it without losing your mind?

You want to say, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to do it. No one’s telling me. Why is it such a goddamned secret? Why will no one tell me?

You don’t say, How am I supposed to keep him alive?

You don’t say, How am I supposed to keep myself alive?

When you found out about placenta previa, when you understood that your baby could die, it felt like punishment for your years of untruth.

You don’t say you hate her for all she’s done and hasn’t done. But for a moment you think it. And that’s when she goes.

Somehow you have to do it. Somehow you have to survive.