After leaving my first husband, prior to actually marrying my second, we discovered that I was pregnant. All those years before, I had adimantly stated that I DID NOT want any children. However, I had decided that IF I did have one, it would be a boy and one of his names would be J---.
With my ongoing-as-of-the-age-of-seven phobia of hypodermic needles, I hated going anywhere NEAR a doctor (more on that later). Since you need to get a prescription for birth control pills, I had long run out of them and been too afraid to get more. Five months into our relationship, I find myself pregnant. I FREAK OUT. At twenty-four, I'm terrified to tell my parents about it.
I have very little recollection of the birth of my first son. Upon arrival at the hospital, I was given two demerol pills, then laughing gas, then an epidural. I had already had two traquilizers BEFORE I even reached the hospital. I was still stoned three days after delivery. But I had a beautiful son!
I got remarried when he was two months old. Then husband got a vasectomy and a week later, we discovered that I was PREGNANT AGAIN! How could that be?!?!? I was breastfeeding J---, on mild birth control, and he's fixed!! I screamed and cried and moaned and wailed. I did NOT want another baby. I was angry, angry, angry! The doctor that had birthed J--- took one look at my face and told me I could abort. I said, "absolutely NOT." He said, "no really. Yes you can." I said, "NO I cannot. Don't ask me again."
So came eight months of puking and inability to move my butt of the couch. And I was angry!!!! Wow, was I angry. Every visit to the doctor I asked if I could just have this kid and get it over with.
Then, five weeks before I should have, screaming agony back pain! It felt like someone was stabbing through my back to my stomach with a double-edged sword, over and over and over. We still had no vehicle so I had to call my parents to drive us 1/2 an hour to the hospital. They looked at me, told me that I couldn't possibly be in labour but that it must be kidney stones. They hooked me up to a saline drip and gave me morphine every couple of hours. At 7am, I sat up to haul myself out of bed to pee and a sudden gush. I had been pierced to "hurry up" labour the first time so I assumed that I shouldn't have had a gush happen when I wasn't supposed to be in labour.
Off of the morphine. Off of the IV. Baby is coming. I am screaming with back pain again. Still stoned on morphine. They send for the epidural guy. Total idiot. I have to wait an extra two hours to push cuz I can't feel anything from my bottom lip down. Then, out comes son number two. He weighs eight pounds. The doctor holds him up for me to see and they rush him out the door. Huh? They get everything cleaned up, move me to a private room and give me some dinner. About an hour or so later, I casually ask when we'll get to see the baby.
"Oh..." they say, "ummm... welllll... he's not coming back." Pardon? "Well, he's having trouble breathing and he's in an incubator." Oh. Okay. I'm still stoned. At four in the morning, they bring him in a gigantic machine that the ambulance people are moving him to a children's hospital in. The oxygen tank can't produce enough for him to breath. I see my new baby through a tiny window.
It takes my parents a whole day and a half to get us to the other hospital. They have to take us to church the next day first. Hmmmm... priorities. We finally arrive at 1.30pm. There is S--- in a computerized cubicle. He is intubated, NG tubed, IV'd on his head and tiny arm, heart monitors, oxygen monitors. He doesn't move. He doesn't do anything that a baby should do. He looks like he is dead. The doctor explains that they had to paralyze him so he wouldn't tear out his tubes. Then they had to give him morphine so his mind didn't panic at his body's paralysis. They told us that he was sick. Very sick. That they thought he was on the road to recovery but that there was a possibility that he could still die.
Long story short, his lungs grew after recieving steroids (the surfactin didn't work cuz he was too big) and he was still addicted to morphine when he left the hospital. The first two days he was home, he would scream for 2 hours, sleep for half an hour, then start screaming again. There were times I wanted to kill him. Literally. I would practically throw him at then husband and tell him to do something with him before I strangled him. He got better after the first year. His lungs never seemed to work right still. He would get awful chest colds every year and he snored horribly. Until he got his adenoids removed at age three.
How does this all relate to guilt, you ask?
I blamed myself that he had come early and nearly died. I didn't want him. I had asked to get rid of him every time I went to the doctors. It must have been my fault that he came early! I had miscarried when I was 20. Felt guilty about that too. Thought that I had killed that baby cuz I didn't want it. Was raped by my first x, felt guilty about that. How could I have "let" him do something like that to me? Why didn't I leave before that? Why didn't I fight him off? Why, why why? I felt guilty that I left him, even tho he was emotionally abusive, even tho he raped me, even tho he had just become physically abusive too.
What I'm trying to say is that when bad things happen, for some strange reason, we tend to feel guilty and blame ourselves, even though we had no control over what happened. It seems to be our human nature. Or is it? Is guilt just something we have learned, from our families, church and society? Think about it. What do you feel guilty for that you should not? Why do you feel guilty? What particular belief do you hold that makes you accept the blame for something that you shouldn't?
And most of all, how do we stop it? How do we stop blaming ourselves for those things in which we cannot control the terrible outcome?
