Emanon’s Journey

“We’re sending you up to Midge’s for a couple of weeks.”

Although I wasn’t comfortable with the decision, I understood the reasons … not to mention that I wasn’t in any position to argue. My dear brother wanted me out of sight, and unable to be found. Berwick, where he lived, and Lewiston, where my folks lived, were out of the question. Patty’s mother’s place up near Augusta was a wise choice, but a difficult one. Although Midge had always been nice enough to me, I found her a bit intimidating.

Patty used to say that her mom accomplished more in one morning than any normal person gets done in a full day. It didn’t take me long to realize that Patty had not been exaggerating. Midge was up by 5 AM every morning, and never seemed to hold still the entire time she was awake. A doctor’s widow, she had the manners of a lady. I felt like a lumbering peasant beside her.

I was only there for two weeks. Midge was kind enough to take me to all of the places I needed to go. With dread in my heart, I went to the Department of Health and Human Services, expecting to find another Mrs. D, however the people I dealt with in Maine were humane, and very kind. The benefits were also substantially higher. Deneen and I would be able to actually eat reasonable meals again, and I would be able to do things like run the oven, and afford the non-grocery necessities we needed, like toilet paper, and laundry detergent. In Rhode Island, it hadn’t been possible to get anything besides diapers. I had to make everything stretch a very long way.

The other place that Midge brought me - was not quite as pleasant. I don’t know if she had found these fellows for me, or if the state had been responsible, but I wasn’t given a choice of OBs for delivering my baby. After my very first visit with one of the two fellows there, both of them foreign, I was relieved that I was only two weeks away from my due date. Little did I know …

My OB back in Georgia had followed my pregnancy from the second month on. He had delivered Deneen, and I trusted him. He informed me that I was due sometime in mid August, which also fit with my own calculations. He looked out for me until I was 5 months along, which is when I left Georgia. Once in Rhode Island, Sue took me to see a local OB. I saw him only once, but he concurred with my Georgia doctor. The first fellow I saw in Maine also concurred. He estimated that I had another two weeks, although I wasn’t showing any signs of being ready yet.

Just around the time I was expected to go into labor, the state found a little motel to hide me in. I’m certain that Midge was glad to have her house to herself again, and Dena and I were glad to be able to sleep in a little later.

The month or so that I spent there was like living in suspended animation. Dena and I shared a double bed, which I had pushed against the wall so that she wouldn’t fall out of bed during the night. In the daytime, we passed the long hours walking the perimeter of the grounds of the tiny place. I never dared go very far, or stress my poor bloated body too badly, because I had visions of taking my 21 month old toddler for a walk, and going into labor far from any help.

One of the first days I was there, I heard a quiet knock at my door. I opened it to find a rather heavy gentleman with a beautiful smile on his face. He introduced himself as Ken. He was a friend of Patty’s sister’s family, and a medic; he taught at a local high school, and drove an ambulance part time. I liked him right away. He was a charmer, and was so thoughtful and solicitous that it took my breath away. The second time he came to see me, it was with a dozen, long-stemmed red roses. I was wowed.

It was Ken’s task to check on me daily, because I was expected to “pop” at any time. Ken was supposed to bring me to the hospital when I went into labor, and deliver Deneen to my Mom in Lewiston. Things didn’t quite turn out that way …

The week passed … and then another. Nothing happened, except that I became more and more uncomfortable. I began to be afraid, because the two physicians disagreed with each other - one of them wanted to induce labor, and the other one kept insisting that I wasn’t being honest about the first physician’s estimated due date. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

As time slowly crawled by, I could feel what I can only describe as hysteria beginning to build up inside. The maple leaves began to blush as we headed into September, and my mid-August due date was by now long behind me. I began to be afraid that there was something wrong with my baby.

Each visit to the OB became more unpleasant than the one before, no matter which of the two physicians I saw. Both left me with the impression that they didn’t like me … and as time passed, I was beginning to think that they didn’t like each other, either. The situation with myself vis-à-vis each one of them, and with myself juxtaposed between the two of them, became almost unbearable.

One of the physicians eventually decided to try inducing labor against the other one’s wishes. He had me report to the hospital in Augusta, and they started a pitocin drip. Less than an hour later, the physician who didn’t want labor induced found me. He looked livid. He said a few rather unjust, accusatory things to me, and then still angry, checked to see if I had begun to dilate. I don’t know if he was deliberate, but he was rough enough for the pain to bring tears to my eyes. He had the drip stopped, and sent me home, all the while making me feel as if I’d done something wrong.

No one else I dealt with was like that - just these fellows. Only much later was I to look back and realize that the difference between the care I received from them, and the care I received for my other three babies, could be summarized in one word: Medicaid. I’m relatively certain that these men didn’t treat all of their patients like that - they would never have stayed in business.

Still more time passed. Everything began to seem surreal. I felt as if I’d wandered into the Twilight Zone - my life would forever continue as it was at that moment: me, weeks overdue to deliver my baby, and my hyperactive toddler doing her best to destroy our little motel room. The hysteria which I’d only just managed to keep at bay up until that point began to seem as if it was percolating just below the surface. Even more terrifying was the realization that the more frightened I became, the less I was able to express it. That wasn’t a new situation for me - it had begun sometime during my abusive marriage to Dale. However, with no place to call home, one baby whose behavior was becoming more and more difficult to control, another one on the way, with the added worry of there being something seriously wrong, and no one that I could turn to with my worries … I was overwhelmed into silence.

The sweet German lady who ran the motel came to my door one afternoon to ask how I was, and commented in her lovely accented English: “Everyone is very worried about you, but you! You are a cucumber! You are not worried at all!”

I remember feeling stunned when she said that. Could no one tell that I ready to go off the deep end? What on earth would people think if they knew what I had going on inside?

At the end of a month, my brother moved me into a small apartment in Winthrop Village. I was relieved to get away from the confinement of the tiny Augusta motel room, and into a place where my baby could sleep on her own bed. I was having some rather serious problems sleeping by this time, and it was becoming extremely difficult to not wake her up during the night.

The apartment was above a barn, attached to the house of a retired school teacher. She was an angel of a woman, and always very kind to me. Her home was within walking distance of the tiny downtown area. The apartment itself had a small living room, a bedroom, a kitchen which was just large enough to contain an ancient metal table, the smallest 4 burner stove I’d ever seen, and an old fridge. The bathroom was off from the kitchen, and had one of those immense antique tubs with four feet. There’s nothing better in the whole world if you need a nice hot bath.

The apartment was furnished with very old furniture. The living room contained an antique sofa which must have been gorgeous in its prime, but which was now faded and worn, a threadbare chair, and a daybed. The bedroom had a tiny chest of drawers which smelled suspiciously of rodent, and a high, large single bed. I’d been given a crib, and I needed it for the new baby … so this high bed was where Deneen was going to have to sleep. She was a real wiggly kid, and I was afraid she’d get hurt.

On the day they moved me in, I was nearly six weeks overdue. I didn’t know that pregnant women could even get as large as I was. People frequently commented that I must be carrying twins - at least.

On the third day I was there, I began to be ill. I couldn’t hold any food down, and I felt as if I had absolutely no strength. I was fortunate enough to have my parents visit me from Lewiston on that day. When they saw that I was completely unable to take of Dena, they took both of us home with them.

This wasn’t easy for my mom to do, although she loved us both to bits. My parents were old enough to be my grandparents, and my mother, who never learned to drive, and could be sent over the edge with even fairly small upsets to her schedule, had a difficult time with Deneen’s hyperactivity. I felt terrible leaving my mum with her full care, but I was completely unable to prevent it.

I lay on the bed in my brothers’ old room for the rest of that day. I began to run a fever during the night, and slept in ten to twenty minute intervals, never really falling into a full sleep. Morning brought no relief. I just seemed to be getting worse.

By mid-morning, a new pain was added to the nausea - cramps. Finally. I was fully 6 weeks overdue, and no one believed me. I was bemused by the realization that I felt too sick to be frightened by that fact anymore.

My father drove me up to the hospital in Augusta, and dropped me off. It was early afternoon, and my labor was picking up steam. I didn’t expect to be in labor for long, because the first time had been unusually brief. I was looking forward to the entire ordeal being over with, and to seeing if my baby was OK.

This was back in the days that going in for a delivery meant being given a soapsuds enema … and although I was already pretty dehydrated, I didn’t manage to escape it. The nurse apologetically did the deed, as I tried very hard to not dissolve into tears from the pain of the advancing labor, the nausea, the lack of sleep … and the overwhelming feeling of weakness. I thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse …

… but I was soon disabused of that idea.

For those who don’t follow the link to the more graphic description of the birth, I will say that the doctor who delivered my son, and his crew, were nothing short of brutal. The emotional agony was every bit as keen, if not more so, than the physical pain of the delivery. Never before, or since, have I been treated in this manner by anyone.

I don’t think that the treatment that I received in the hospital in Augusta, Maine on September 29, 1977, was all that uncommon for people on welfare. I hope to the powers that be that such inhumane practices no longer exist - for anyone, whatever their state of life. Poverty, difficult situations … hard times … are not respecters of social status. They can happen to anyone, at any time.

Such is life - you may have everything today, and tomorrow find yourself rivaling Job. Remember that, before you deign to look down on another human being, and consider yourself a better person simply because of your financial successes. In doing so, you’ve already lowered yourself beneath your own imagined station.

The first thing I remember after the birth was waking up in a large, dim room. A single nurse was there, whom I didn’t recognize. She told me that I’d given birth to a healthy seven and a half pound boy at about 6:30 PM. I don’t know what time it was when I woke up, but it was dark outside. When I asked if she knew if they’d given me something to knock me out in the delivery room, she told that they hadn’t given me any drugs. I could feel my heart skipping beats, over and over, and the nurse commented on it, but nothing ever came of it. I was brought into a private room - which really surprised me, since they were hard to get and expensive.

They brought me my son, and I finally got to hold him and nurse him. My first impression was that his head was huge. I’d never seen another newborn with such a large head. I became afraid again, but the nurse reassured me that the doctor who’d seen him had given him a clean bill of health. I later learned that post mature babies frequently have large heads. He was also a full pound heavier than any of my other three babies - which tended to run small, from 5 pounds, 7 ounces, up through 6 and a half pounds.

He had a good appetite, however, and seemed to act normally … which was encouraging. Dale had not allowed me to nurse Deneen, and I was determined that I was going to nurse the rest of my children. Darian Dael and I began our bonding process.

It wasn’t until I made my first foray out of bed, and wobbled my way to the rest room with the help of a nurse, that I began to understand why they had put me in a private room. When I looked in the mirror, I thought at first that there was something wrong with my vision. A closer inspection made me understand that it wasn’t my vision - it was my face: it was covered in broken blood vessels. I had varying sized bruises across my face, from pinpoints all the way up to dime sized. I looked as if I’d been peppered with red and purple blotches. I was a sight to behold! The nurse explained that I had done that to myself when I trying to push during labor. It made sense. I truly had been beating myself against a stone wall, after all. I though of how I should be angry at the doctor for making me push before it was time, but I just didn’t have the energy to bother.

The day after Darian was born, my parents came up from Lewiston with Deneen. My mother, my poor mother, looked as if she were about to have a heart attack … and with her congenital mitral valve problems, I was afraid for her. Deneen - who had been a wild thing ever since I’d gotten her back from Dale, was more wound up than I’d ever seen her: my 23 month old daughter was turning over the furniture in the hospital waiting room - she was completely out of control.

Arrangements were made for Patty’s sister, Pam, who lived in a nearby town, to take Deneen until I was discharged, and my poor mother went home to rest. Alone in my hospital room, I wondered what would become of us: a lost soul, put in charge of two, delicate little lives. How could things have ever gotten so confusing, so difficult … ? How on earth was I going to raise those two children alone?