She Was My Only Baby

She Was My Only Baby
by Lise Hauser
When I knew that I wanted to be a midwife, it was because I wanted to care for the women, not because of the babies.  I grew up taking care of my mom and my siblings after my dad died.  Somehow I never envisioned myself as a mother.  But I could see myself teaching women to be healthy, to love and honor their bodies, to let go of fear and to be proud of themselves.

I became a certified nurse-midwife.  The year I graduated with my master’s degree, I fell in love, and after a few years, we started talking about having babies together.  It seemed like a new kind of hope for me, imagining the future.  The month before we were going to start trying to get pregnant, I woke up in excruciating pain.  Worse than any period I’d ever had, though they’d always been bad.  After twelve hours in the ER and three hours in surgery, I learned that I had a ruptured endometrioma, severe endometriosis, and my pelvis was filled with scar tissue.  Our only hope for me to get pregnant was IVF.  So we started that process.  For anyone who’s been down that road, you know that the hormones, the invasive procedures and the agonizing hope/despair cycle are brutal on a relationship.  Mine was falling apart already.  But I pushed on, imagining that if I could only bring our baby into the world, I would resurrect the love we’d once shared.

When the nurse called and said “you’re pregnant”, I made her repeat it, just for the joy of hearing the words.  It was our third IVF cycle.  Insurance only paid for four.  It was so early, but I was filled with joy.  As a midwife, I knew just what my baby looked like at that age.  I was hit with waves of nausea, but even those felt like miracles. Soon we were in the doctor’s office, and I saw my baby’s heart beating inside of me.  Even now, 15 years later, I pause to marvel that there was once another life inside of me.  Later, when my back burned with pain, I ignored it.  I was used to that, from my endometriosis. I was always in pain.  It didn’t dawn on me that I was cramping until I started bleeding.  I delivered my baby into my own hands later that night.  As so many women had delivered their babies into my hands, here was my own child, barely a fetus.  Perhaps you’ll say that she wasn’t a baby, that she wasn’t old enough to count, that she didn’t matter.  She was my baby.  She was my only baby.  I know she was a girl because they did genetic studies.  Nothing was wrong with her chromosomes.  I just could not hold on to her.

My sister and I were pregnant together for a short time.  Now when I look at my beloved nephew, sometimes I see his phantom cousin by his side.  Her life burned through me and I could not contain her.  For the brief time that she lived with me, I adored her.  I walked through the world pointing out the beauty to her.  When my ex would rage at me, I’d promise to protect her.  I left that relationship within a year of losing her.
For a while, I didn’t know how to continue on as a midwife without my child.  I just kept going to work because I didn’t know what else to do.  I still loved the ladies, and I loved the babies. Mother’s Day was lousy every year.  I finally asked my sister and mom to stop saying that I was “the mother to all the babies I’d delivered”, because I’m not.  They have mothers.  I was paid to help them be born safely. It was my privilege to care for them.  They are not my children.  Six years ago I married a wonderful man, and his 25-year-old daughter is someone I dearly love. I’m not her mother.  She has a mother.  I don’t have any (living) children.
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Lise HauserLise is 55 years old (born in 1960) and became a mother to her daughter Mia in 1999 after years of infertility “treatment” and three cycles of IVF.  She lost Mia the day after seeing her heartbeat for the first time, and has ached to hold her ever since.  Lise is a certified nurse-midwife in Chicago.  She has delivered over 800 babies and attended thousands of women through their pregnancies and births. She honors all women’s experiences of motherhood.

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