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She was not going to give up so easily. She had battled for her life as a premature tiny baby for months in a neonatal unit before she learned to recognize her mother’s lap. How could a Doctor dissuade her into believing that her baby could be abnormal because of screening parameters that she barely could interpret, so she cried over it. She was determined.
She had miscarried five times in a row. She kept losing her babies one after the other bleeding often suddenly while writing her Obstetrics fellowship exams. She panicked the moment she saw red stains on her sheet early mornings, in toilet bowls, and sometimes in her third trimester while she was just few weeks away from her due date of delivery. The tremendous pain in her soul of grieving over her unborn children she kept spontaneously aborting increased with each loss and the mother in her got slowly buried in hopelessness. She kept miscarrying despite a whole gamut of complex latest tests to identify the probable cause. She bled with cerclage, without cerclage (an operation done for cervical incompetency) and her own Obstetrics knowledge failed when it came to her.
As if it wasn’t punishment enough, she had to reassure her patients as she went about helping other woman conceive and carry their babies to full term. She would operate, deliver as the situation demanded to safely hand them to their elated mothers. Traumatized by her own experience of it all she wondered if she would ever be called MOMMY. She kept oscillating between faith and fear a thousand times like a habit in her sixth pregnancy. She was pinned to her bed, confined in a small room in her own maternity center too scared to move lest that itself would disrupt the sensitive and weak uterine support system which she had. She was determined.
She was obese, had PCOD (polycystic ovarian disease) with irregular cycles. Along with struggle to conceive she had to struggle for money for simple hormonal assays. She was lucky to conceive sooner with right treatment yet she got a rude shock at her anomaly scan which was abnormal. The parameters of radiology and the interpretations of triple test qualified her baby in high-risk probability for Down’s syndrome and she was depressed to her core. Abortion was a considerable option to save her from her future misery with a child like that. She carried a BPL (below poverty line) card to avail concessions for medical treatment wherever possible. She was determined.
She underwent a hysterectomy early at 27 after having one normal child and failed treatments for secondary infertility. Her monthly cycles were debilitating painful, bloody and crippling. She had endometriosis, adenomyosis and uterine fibroids. She was the first to show up to adopt a newly born baby girl late at night. She hardly had any time to decide if she could manage financially or was settled enough to welcome the latest addition in her family. She just wanted to complete her family. She had no chance of a natural birth anyway. She was determined.
She was labelled an elderly Primi (a woman conceiving for the first time at or after thirty-five) as she married late and was having her first baby even later. She fitted nowhere in the ideal age bracket for reproduction and added to it she was counselled about hundred odd possibilities that she may have to face. From miscarriage, toxemia, gestational diabetes, possible surgery along with genetic risks everything was spelt out in great detail and she returned from her OB consults sullen and feeling low. Added to it there was no family support and the couple were in an unfamiliar city with people speaking a different language. She often wondered whom she would call for help as her own mother was no more. She was psyched inside. She was determined.
She had already gone through a harrowing time with her first born whom she had conceived after multiple cycles of costly IVF treatments and on top of baby had a congenital heart defect putting the parents through another cycle of distress. The hormonal havoc in her body was responsible the way she looked now. Her happiness knew no bounds the day she spontaneously conceived. Her forty status was not going to deter her from having a child again. She knew her career would have to take a royal break and she would had already learnt to keep her ambition at bay. She was determined.
She had no patience, time or energy to further invest in infertility treatments after they had failed. She had seen others go through it and decided to adopt. The girl child shortlisted for the couple had the deepest scar on her face who was probably left for dead or clawed. The orphanage did not have a clue about her past and was okay even if they refused. The mother consulted the top plastic surgeon only once if he would help her recontour her facial scar by a revision surgery should the child have an issue in future. She was determined.
She had an absolutely normal child till she noticed that her child was not like the others. Delayed milestones and abnormal behavior pattern sent her seeking advice till he was labelled autistic. She had confined herself and allowed herself to be consumed in taking care of this child with special needs as whole heartedly with little liberty to travel and even smaller space for her own sanity and she was quiet obsessive when it came to his care taking. She had lost her own mother in her teens and felt clueless inside. She was determined.
Her child was diagnosed to have a late congenital anomaly fifteen days prior to his birth. She could do little except blame herself for going to many times in the X ray rooms while giving clearances to trauma patients and not taking care of herself throughout her pregnancy which demanded her to work long hours and she had kept her pregnancy hidden from most. She had multiple nutritional deficiencies playing havoc in her body. She would have enough time any way to soak herself She was determined.
She was far away across seven seas in a different continent. Her APH (repeated bleeding) and preterm contractions were warnings not to be taken lightly. The Doctor said somehow to hold on till they could take out the baby and she had to be in the hospital resting. Resting was not her nature and she yearned to go home and get on with her life and three months in that situation would kill her. She hated to be in that spot. She was determined.
Determination literally means a strong motivation to succeed. Question is against what? Would you stay as determined fighting the odds if the predicted outcome may not be up to your expectations. I wish I understood statistics better, to really interpret the “Odds ratio”, the “p “value and the “confidence interval” that medical research gets interpreted in, I could only oversimplify for myself to understand it differently. The probability for “unexpected “was high in every scenario with barely any confidence left to move forward. What did one require to live through these experiences?
A fierce woman willing to walk a difficult journey physically, emotionally and mentally to claim her title of “MOM”.
Did one need to birth naturally to be a great mother is another thought that has crossed my mind? But it is just a belief, I am willing to let go having seen brilliant examples myself, for I have seen scars fade by the healing power of love from parents poured into the face of the baby girl that the plastic surgeon may be out forever. Such is the acceptance of open-hearted individuals and it has nothing to do with the quality of life provided to the child. They are natural parents even if they didn’t seed him/her. Each of the mothers quoted had a very special price to pay along with unwavering faith. A female who was fertile with the “idea of a baby “no matter at what time the seeds were sown or dispersed and she continued to water that thought, providing nourishment and power to it even if was hard on her. Motherhood is a complex experience. It cannot be taught; it has to be lived. It gets stamped the moment those two lines appear on a pregnancy kit. For majority pregnancy is flowery, exciting and pink like in Prega news while for others it is a just the unfolding of a stressful chapter full of fear, worry, anxiety, body disturbances and “bloody” experience. This special group of women needs to be handled more sensitively as they are likely to face more challenges. This may be where we as experts can help differently not by simply labelling them as “high-risk “pregnancies but helping them navigate through these tough phases.
Science and research to day have made it possible to avail better screening modalities, investigative work up, second and third level studies, an era of superior antibiotics is here and fetal medicine expertise is becoming available all across the world to treating doctors. The labor room’s metamorphosis into birthing suites is a welcome change. But have we been able to support the pregnant mothers enough for them to sail through their nine months journey at a deeper level? Now that we can selectively grow embryo in petri dishes are mothers feeling more reassured? The sensitivity of modalities has undoubtedly made the doctors pick up the subtle signs and warnings early but have we improved our counselling skills equally to aid them at multiple levels? Somewhere the fear factor and anticipation of what can go wrong is also impressed upon their psyche early especially in a phase when they are undergoing bodily changes and are emotionally labile. The distress and anxiety keep peaking to a level when they have to count their gestation by minutes, hours and weeks till they somehow reach a near or full term. The age-old experience of mothers, grandmothers and friends does little to help as those stories have existed in a timeframe with less access to all that is available today and also the fact remains that each body is different and even in the same woman the consecutive pregnancy experience may vary. This is where families can help by creating a more supportive atmosphere where communication and understanding may be the key including those from spouses. I am happy that today we see more co-operative partners willing to undergo that experience with women to boost up their spirits and happily agreeing to be stay at home dads. But there is an emotional maturity level to upscale for them as well. I am glad to see swelling numbers who are more receptive and sensitive compared to the generation that they come from and it makes our work easier to work with this subset of women. Significant number of males may still not be very comfortable talking about how their partner’s agony affects them. Our counselling rooms should probably need to get ready with an extra chair for these willing men to be the automatic anchors of our expecting mothers. I believe that a dad is also born the moment those two lines appear after a missed period and here is the good news that he is here to help with the baby blues.
THE WILL, FEELING, DESIRE AND ACTIVE EFFORT ON THE PART OF THE PREGNANT WOMAN, MAY COMPLETELY REVERSE HEREDITY AND NATURAL TENDENCIES NOT TO MENTION FUTURE POSSIBILITIES.
—–R. SWINBURNE CLYMER (quoted from book “Nurturing your baby’s soul “-by Elizabeth Clare Prophet)
