The line between what is and what could have been

I look at Holden and I still cannot believe he is here. That he is so beautiful and so sweet and so smiley and so ours. It is amazing and heartbreaking all at once to know how differently things could have gone, how he could have not ever come into my life.

I read a blog by a local woman who has been trying for years to have a baby — I’m talking multiple rounds of very expensive fertility treatments and plenty of loss and heartache — and not too long ago announced that she’s finally for-real pregnant, going on twenty weeks. I lurk so I’m not going to link, but suffice it to say that when she finally got her Big Fat Positive, I was pumping my virtual fist for her. She writes with excitement but just under the surface is, I think, great trepidation and the fear that at any moment, everything could go horribly wrong. She shared a link to a blog post where a couple is mourning the loss of their twins, who were born at 19 weeks, 5 days. They were too small to survive, born just shy of the mark where modern medicine — marvel that it can be — can give a severely premature baby a significant fighting chance. I read this and got choked up and had to click off.

There’s also a woman here in town who lost her baby boy at 35 weeks. There was an accident with the cord in utero and he suffocated. He had a name and a room and he just did not make it here, into this world. That is so difficult to imagine. The randomness of it seems cruel.

We were spooked when we found out Holden had a single umbilical artery. I had this vision of him being trapped in there like a scuba diver with a single constricted air tube being the only thing keeping him alive. When he came out, I could only hold him at mid-chest level because the cord was too short for me to hold him up to get a good look at him. I spent my first few minutes with him gazing at the top of his head, so full of hair, just listening to his little whimpers. I was overwhelmed with relief that he had made it out okay. Our midwife inspected the placenta and said she’d never seen anything quite like it. She showed me how the cord was inserted on the side instead of smack in the middle like most placentas and cords were attached. We found out later that this particular condition has a name: velamentous cord insertion. A single umbilical artery can lead to uterine growth restriction, and a velamentous cord insertion can rupture and lead to stillbirth or, according to that Wikipedia page (I know, I know), fetal death during labor. Together, the baby’s full-term existence just seemed … precarious.

And yet there was my baby boy. So strong. He was and is small, possibly from the SUA giving him a bit of a slow start, but he is perfect. He came a few days early, and sometimes I wonder if it’s because the placenta and cord were beginning to not be able to provide for him anymore and he just decided to come on out so he could get fed for real. I say “he” but I don’t even know what I’m referring to here. Obviously he wasn’t in there pulling a ripcord. If I were religious, I’d say God went ahead and shoved him out of the plane with his chute ready to go, so to speak. I guess I really just mean “nature,” “hormones,” “instinct.” Whatever set the whole ball rolling. I don’t know. That mercurial, churning force that propels life forward but also destroys it. That thing.

That day, that force worked the way one always hope it will. It could have just as easily gone the other way because life is not fair and life often introduces such throbbing heartache when you’re expecting radiant joy. I am so grateful that my boy got here safely in spite of a couple of what could have been major biological setbacks. I aim that gratitude at whatever creative entity is out there and willing to take it. I realize that sounds hokey in an “I’m not religious; I’m spiritual” way, but that’s not how I mean it. I mean it in a “I want to beam this gratitude into the universe as hard as I possibly can so there is no mistaking how thankful I am for my baby’s healthy existence” way. It is the most pure form of gratitude I have ever known.