Remembering skin-to-skin time with our stillborn daughter
As the months pass, I feel the need to write less and to think more. I find myself meditating as deeply as I can about my strongest memories of Blair. I remember my most precious moment with her: skin-to-skin. Our sweet nurse suggested this to us, and the thought hadn’t occurred to me prior as this is something generally done for the benefit of a live baby. But of course, my answer was a thousand times “yes”.
During pregnancy, babies are as close to their moms as they can be—getting warmth, food, protection, and oxygen from their mother’s body. Then, labor occurs and babies suddenly find themselves without immediate access to those essential needs. It is not surprising that study after study has shown a host of benefits for babies who experience skin-to-skin care (sometimes called “kangaroo care”) with their mothers. It is the closest they can get to being back in the warmth and security of the womb.
Whenever possible, mothers and babies should be in direct contact for at least the first 1–2 hours after birth. In skin-to-skin care, the baby is naked and is placed on the mother’s bare chest. A blanket should be draped over both of them for warmth. (Source)
I closed my eyes and held Blair skin-to-skin. I just felt her as my child. My daughter. Not a limp and lifeless body. Not a decomposing body . Just my daughter. I felt her still-warm body resting on mine. I felt her little head in the nook of my shoulders. I placed her on me just like I would hold her big sisters when they woke up in the middle of the night. I nestled by own head on top of hers as she laid there and took long, deep breaths. My child. This was my child.
It was also in this moment that I knew that I wanted more children. My love had expanded so much as I Blair, in ways I hadn’t really felt in her early pregnancy as I feared how I’d be able to manage young toddler twins and a newborn. In that moment, in no longer scared me to have the big family of which my husband has always dreamed. I wanted Blair, of course, but I also wanted and II understood my capacity for love and to mother more children. I was holding my child and trying to bottle up all of the acts of love and care that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do for her as a baby and throughout her childhood.
I came to realize that the benefit of skin-to-skin had transferred from the usual living child to the bereaved mother after stillbirth. I had the opportunity to still mother Blair.
