Motherhood

This is the true story of how a young woman’s maternal instinct and her belief in the strength and reliability of her own intuition saved her son’s life and kept her family intact and free from the devastation of sorrow and loss. The incident occurred over four decades ago but still attests to the inherent insight born in women when they become mothers...

The contractions started shortly after she’d cleared the breakfast dishes from the table. The baby wasn’t due for another three and a half weeks, so she assumed they were Braxton Hicks, and wasn’t concerned. With her first two pregnancies, she had no labor pains until after her water broke and she was halfway on the way to the hospital. The discomfort felt similar to those early labor pains, but she reasoned that she probably was just more tired than usual and needed to rest and take things easy once she finished her morning chores.

Down in the basement, she threw a load of dirty laundry in the washer and pulled last night’s dried towels from the dryer. Her daughters, aged two and four, sat by the toy box and spoke in youthful, melodic tones as they invented tales for their rainbow-colored ponies. As she folded, the pangs grew slightly stronger but still, they did not worry her.

But by noon, she was no longer confident. One call to her OB led to a second call to her husband, then a third call to her mother-in-law. She was prepared, yet apprehensive because at her last appointment, her doctor gave warning that the child was breech and mentioned the possibility of needing a cesarean section.

An ultrasound revealed that the baby was still in breech position, but since the child’s weight was minimal, she was able to deliver without complications or surgical means. At five pounds and eight ounces, he was born healthy and both mother and baby were discharged after three days. The couple was thrilled to welcome a boy to their family.

Newborn care fell into place naturally since this was her third child. He wasn’t home twenty-four hours, however, before she knew something was different. This little boy did not want to eat the way his sisters had, and his tiny fists felt unusually cool. She knew the tricks to get the child to latch onto her breasts, but she could not get him to stay awake long enough to take in needed nutrition.

Newborns nap the majority of their hours, but they also hunger frequently and this one didn’t care to suckle. It seemed that all he wanted was to sleep. His listlessness and coolness disturbed her and his color appeared more pale than new-baby pink. He barely fussed and when he did it was a weak cry. Concerned, she phoned the number on her discharge papers and reported her unease.

The nurse she spoke with recommended everything she had already tried in order to get him to eat, including unwrapping him to help keep him awake and less cozy. As an afterthought, the nurse suggested she take his temperature and call back if needed. She suspected that the RN thought she was overreacting, but her guts told her otherwise.

Using the thermometer that she brought home from the hospital, she placed it under his arm to get an axillary reading, but the thermometer would not display a temperature. Nor did the other two she still had from her previous stays in the maternity ward. Alarmed at this point, she re-dialed the hospital nursery.

This time she was told to bring the baby back to the hospital. She detected a remaining hint of doubt in the nurse’s voice but undaunted, she ignored it. As on the day her boy was born, she made calls to her husband and her children’s grandmother.

In the mid-1980s, glass mercury thermometers only registered temperatures over ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit. At the hospital nursery, the clinical thermometer read ninety-two, confirming that the baby was hypothermic. He was placed in a warmer immediately to raise his temperature and given antibiotics as a precaution to ward off possible infection.

The infant eventually spent three weeks in neonatal care before coming home again with his relieved and grateful parents. During his stay, one of his nurses confided that had his mother not been persistent that something was awry, her baby most likely would have died in his sleep. When asked how she knew, she shrugged her shoulders saying simply, “I’m his mother. It’s my job.”

“Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe