You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

OUR THIRD PREGNANCY

On a Summer day in 1976, my wife, Maura, and I were in our car on Capital Highway, not far from our home in Portland, Oregon. I don’t remember where we were headed, but I remember the conversation distinctly. Her voice conveyed a foreboding as she said. “I think I am pregnant. I have missed my period, and I have not been feeling well.” There was a pause, then she said, “Tod, I don’t want to go through another pregnancy and cesarean.” That is all that I remember. I don’t remember exactly how I responded, but I am sure I conveyed sympathy for how she must be feeling, considering the cesarean delivery she had experienced with our second child had been botched. I could understand her desire not to go through that awful experience again. I’m also sure I expressed my feeling that, while we had not planned to have a third child, I liked the idea of having another little one in our home.

At the outset of her previous cesarean delivery, Maura had been administered drugs by the anesthesiologist. A few minutes later, her surgeon asked if she could feel it when he pinched her and pricked her belly with his scalpel. She could feel it plainly, but she could not speak. He proceeded to make the incision. She later reported that she could feel the long, hot, painful sensation as he made the incision across her abdomen. She felt every motion of the surgeon as he proceeded to slice open her uterus and remove her baby, Monica. That was followed by the pain of suturing her incisions closed. As if that were not enough to go through, she developed a serious infection from the surgical procedure. She was required to stay in the hospital on a heavy regimen of antibiotics for several days.

On the morning after her cesarean. I went to the hospital to visit Maura so she could see our baby daughter. I found Maura to be very ill. Maura told me that she was not allowed to see her baby for fear that the baby would become infected also. After visiting Maura, I took the elevator down two floors to the nursery to see our new daughter for the first time. When I arrived at the nursery, I was told that she was not there out of concern that she may have been infected, and if so, she could infect other infants. I was led down an interior corridor past several doors. The nurse opened one of the doors. It was a narrow, dimly lit storage room. There in the aisle between rows of steel shelves stacked with hospital linens and medical supplies was a portable crib. In it, alone in this storage room, was our tiny baby girl.

I told the nurse that I would not have my child held alone in a dark storage room, and that I was taking her home. “Oh no! You can’t do that,” the nurse protested. “I’m not leaving this hospital without my child,” I told her. Saying “Stay here,” she turned and left the room. Twenty minutes later, she returned to say that she had talked with her supervisor. Her supervisor had conferred with someone higher in the hospital’s administration. “We do not recommend that you take her,” the nurse said. “But since she is your child, we can’t prevent you from taking her if you must”. I assured her that Monica would be better off at home with me. The nurse wrapped her in a blanket and carried her to the hospital entrance, where I was handed my baby, and we drove home.

Monica was our second child. I knew how to take care of a baby. She and I did fine. On the third day after she was born, I took Monica to visit Maura. We were not allowed to go up to Maura’s room for fear of infection. I was not told infection of whom or by what. So I carried Monica around to the parking lot two stories below the window of Maura’s hospital room. I held Monica up so Maura could look down and see her baby daughter for the first time.

Maura’s Italian mother arrived from Santa Barbara on the fourth day after Monica’s birth. Upon entering the house, she took Monica in her arms and, turning away from me, she said, “She is my baby now. You stay away.” I found her behavior offensive, but I knew her. I chose not to cause a scene, knowing that Maura would be well enough to come home from the hospital the following day.

A month later, Maura had a postoperative check-up. I went with her and was waiting in the lobby when a nurse stopped to say hello. I knew her because she was the instructor of the childbirth classes that we had attended. She casually asked, “How did the delivery go”? When I started to tell her, her eyes became large. Her jaw dropped as she mouthed the words “Oh my God! She sat down, heavily, on the waiting room couch next to me and, looking directly into my eyes, she said, “Tell me about it! All about it!” She must have recognized what had happened, but she didn’t tell me. I later learned that Maura was a victim of a classic surgical error in which the anesthesiologist administered too much muscle relaxant, resulting in Maura’s inability to talk, and an inadequate dose of painkiller.

As a result of the trauma of that experience, Maura was determined to terminate her third pregnancy. We talked about it a lot. I was sympathetic with her reluctance to go through another cesarean. We knew that her prior experience had been the result of an error. I tried to assure her that it would not happen again. I also made it clear that I would accept her decision, although I hoped that she would change her mind. Her mother and sisters urged her not to have an abortion. We all let her know that we accepted that it was her body and her decision. She was determined to go ahead with it.

I was invited to attend the appointment with the surgeon who would perform the abortion. I couldn’t bring myself to go. When Maura came home from that appointment, she told me that the surgeon had described the procedure step by step, including how it would kill the fetus. She was very upset.

The surgeon had given her papers for me to sign. They confirmed my approval for the hospital to perform the abortion. My approval was not necessary for her to proceed. I didn’t approve and refused to sign the papers. On the day of the abortion, I drove Maura to the hospital, but I wouldn’t wait for her there. I did not want to have any part in it.

Approximately two hours after dropping her off, she phoned me to come pick her up. On the way home, she described how she was prepared for the procedure. And that, when the doctor was about to start the process, he said, “This is your last chance to change your mind.” She told him, “Stop. I can’t go through with this. I will go ahead with the pregnancy and cesarean delivery”. When she told me this, I was elated. It was phenomenally good news for me, and yet I realized that it was a difficult decision for Maura, who now had to go through her third pregnancy and endure another cesarean.

Her pregnancy proceeded smoothly. When the delivery day arrived, we went to the hospital. Twenty minutes after Maura had gone into the operating room, a nurse came out to find me in the waiting room. She was the same nurse to whom I had described Maura’s previous botched cesarean. She came out to assure me that “The delivery is going perfectly. You have a healthy baby boy.”

Maura had suffered minimal pain, and she was able to be with her baby son, Justin, in her hospital room. She said to tell you, “Maura loves him to pieces.”