By Alexandra Davis
@alexandraelizabethdavis

“We’ll take good care of your wife,” the energetic anesthesiology resident assured my husband as they wheeled my bed out of the curtained room. We made lighthearted chatter as we wound our way down the cold labor and delivery corridor, the resident on one side and the attending obstetrician on the other. The attending called me “chipper” and I quietly applauded myself for this sham of cheeriness. That game changed when the metal doors slid open and I stole my first glimpse of the operating room. I don’t know if it was its blinding whiteness, the chattering horde of strangers in surgical scrubs (why does one procedure require so many people?), or the sickening sterility of it all, but the impact smacked that smile right off my face. I was a 31-year-old mother of two babies—one at home with his grandparents, one in-utero—but suddenly, all I wanted was my own mama. 

I rested my hand on my 30-week-pregnant belly and whispered a prayer for Baby Liam, who had recently shown signs of distress caused by fetal anemia. We’d been admitted for a high-risk procedure that involved transfusing donor blood through an IV into my belly, past the placenta, and into Liam’s sedated body, eerily suspended in the amniotic fluid like a ragdoll. I was acutely aware that my son’s health—his life—rested in the sonographer who lightheartedly chattered about her retirement plans, in the compatibility of the donor blood, in the resident who slipped the epidural needle between my vertebrae, in the OB fellow who made easy conversation to try to keep me calm. 

Some combination of the sedatives, the way the blood bag dangled just inches from my face, and the awkward tilt of the operating table (head lower than feet), gripped me with intense nausea, and I weakly called out for Zofran. The kind anesthesiologist heard my plea and relief flowed through my body with the drugs. I closed my eyes and thanked God for the miracle of modern medicine, a phenomenon with the power to simultaneously save my baby’s life and make a scary procedure bearable (or, at least, stave off what was about to be an embarrassing GI situation). At the same time, a tiny voice pinged in my imagination. It was my dad’s voice, and he was uttering a refrain I’ve heard from him no less than a hundred times: 

“This will require you to become uncomfortable.” 

I shifted myself into a slightly more agreeable position on the table and under my paper mask, felt the edges of my mouth curl up into a halfhearted smile. 

Understatement of the year, huh Dad?

***

I was a sophomore in high school, not particularly athletic, and not always the biggest fan of pushing myself to my outer limits. (What high school sophomore is? But I digress.). I’d joined my school’s fledgling cross-country team, led by my dad, an avid runner who still believes everyone can and should be as enthused about running as he is. 

My dad took me on a training run one weekend against my bitter griping. As we looped the same wooded trail for the third time, I finally shared that I was quite done, thank you very much. He shot back that we weren’t. We’d only done three miles. We were shooting for five. After my classically dramatic and unnecessarily long adolescent SIGH, my dad dropped what would become his signature line:

“This will require you to become uncomfortable.” 

It certainly did, and though the higher and better part of me wanted to be grateful for this character-building opportunity, the raw and human part of me just wanted to whine. (And I did. Plenty.) 

***

I sat at our kitchen bar with a white sherpa blanket wrapped around my shoulders, hunched pathetically over half a grapefruit. This was not only my first pregnancy, but also the first time in my life I fully grasped the cruelty of a misleading phrase: “morning sickness” was definitely not limited to the morning hours, and when my showstopping nausea didn’t immediately abate when the clock struck noon, I felt I’d been hoodwinked. Every day, I spent my energy budget on the “where’s the closest bathroom?” calculus. Food—especially chicken—was a persona non grata. But I also knew that the tiny baby blooming inside me needed to eat, and therefore so did I.

But far worse than the nausea was the guilt: I’d waited, prayed, for this baby for years. Years of filling my bathroom garbage with tiny sticks with only one pink line. Years of slipping out of baby showers after icebreakers and before gifts so no one would see me cry. And all I could think was: FINALLY, it’s my turn. But here I am throwing myself a pity party because I’m tired and queasy. What is wrong with me?

Could this be the real beauty of the human heart, that we can hold space for all of these things? For deep gratitude, celebration, and joy, but also a little bit of compassion for the part of us that is just really damn tired, sick, and uncomfortable? 

I think so. At least, that’s what I told myself. 

***

The NICU was peaceful at night, and on this particular evening, it felt a little less sterile than usual. All six babies were asleep, including mine, and all I could hear was the country music station on loop. I held now 3-week-old Liam. He was big for a preemie—every nurse told us—and sucked down his bottles with the gusto of a ten-pound term baby. He was the spitting image of his older brother with his button nose and fuzzy, barely-there hair, and his pallor improved by the day thanks to the third infusion of donor blood coursing through his tiny veins. It had been six weeks since I was first wheeled into the operating room for a transfusion. There was one more of those procedures—just two weeks after the first—but that one ended in an emergency c-section after what the medical charts called a “non-reassuring fetal heartrate.” Translation: they weren’t sure if it was a normal heartrate drop due to the increased fluids or a potentially fatal abruption. They decided not to wait around to find out, and so arrived Liam, eight weeks early but pink and round as they lifted him high for me to see, and I cried and called out his name. 

The life of a NICU mom is a constant battle against a swell of emotions. In a single day, I’d feel bone-deep gratitude for my baby’s life and health, but also echoing, aching sadness that he wasn’t home with us. I’d feel tempted into bitterness toward my friends who shared their own redemptive birth stories, but also intense pride in what my body endured, painful as it was. I’d feel a swell of love for the nurses who comforted him at night when he cried but gripped by the pain of knowing it should’ve been me instead.

Our NICU stay called me into uncharted emotional territory, a far cry from the comfortable self-confidence of Me Before Kids. But even without the added challenges of a high-risk pregnancy and premature birth, the work of growing, nurturing, and raising babies calls us into higher places, what some authors call “thin spaces:” moments when the veil between heaven and earth becomes thinner than delicate lace. Morning sickness, labor pains, postpartum healing, nursing woes, toddler tantrums, the intense love for our children that literally makes us heartsick: these trials are the furnace, and we are the crude metals in need of refinement. They’re not just par for the course—they’re a right of passage. While at times I wished my rite of passage involved a little less medical intervention, it was the one I needed to tread.

***

Two hours into the race, I vowed to never run again. I also resolved to find—and punch—the person who planned the race route (is it really necessary to save the steepest hill for the last mile?). I was more than ready to phone it in, to take it down to a slow walk and just amble over the finish line. But my dad was having none of that. 

“We’ve run 12.1 miles. We can run one more,” he said. 

This dose of tough love was all I needed to push myself up the hill and over the finish line. 13.1 and done.

That was indeed my very last half marathon. 

I remember the day my OB called to tell me I had a condition that would complicate all of my future pregnancies. I cried in my car in an empty parking lot, with my mom looking startled on the driver’s side and my infant son babbling in the back. Dr. Yoon told me that if my condition wasn’t monitored and treated, I might not have any more living children. And he told me that if it WAS monitored and treated, I could, in fact, have more healthy babies.

“It just won’t be easy anymore,” he said.

Not easy? That’s all? I felt relief flood my body as I let those words sink in. I could handle “not easy” if it meant I could have more babies. Not easy was so much better than no living children.

“Easy” isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe motherhood. Most days, it demands things of me that I never thought possible, just as I never thought I could move my swollen sneakered foot one more damn step. But then, with some fantastic combination of tough love, or maybe grace, I somehow find it in me to take just one more painful step. To do just one more hard thing. And in those moments what I feel is peaceful, organic, rhythmic, like a beating heart, like oxygen flowing in and out of lungs, like feet pounding pavement, like my baby’s heartbeat, reassuring and steady as they laid him on my chest. 

Guest essay written by Alexandra Davis. Alexandra is a wife, mother, attorney, and writer. She writes on all that is hard and beautiful about motherhood and family life. Most recently, her work has appeared in Verily Magazine, Public Discourse, FemCatholic, and Everyday Mamas. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband and two wild baby boys. You can find more of her work on her website and on Instagram.