The Initiation From Maiden to Mother: A Story of Resilience and Faith
Image by Heller Images, copyright 2024. Stages of Motherhood
TRIGGER WARNING: premature labor and a baby in the NICU.
If you are an expectant mother, please consider thoroughly before reading if you want to wait until after you have delivered.
As I was brushing my teeth the morning of November 2nd, 2024, I found myself wondering, yet again, what his astrology would be. Would he arrive on his due date? What sign will the moon be in? Will he even make it within Capricorn season? I looked down at my swollen belly, seven months into growing my first baby. As my eyes rose back to meet the reflection in the mirror, my inner voice responded, It’s all in his divine timing. I just have to trust that. All in divine and perfect timing. I felt a sense of peace at that moment. My nervous system settled, calibrated to the frequency of trust.
My family was bustling around me performing last minute tasks, grumbling about the rainy day that the forecast had promised to let up by eleven. My mom was soggy tromping through our forested yard, meticulously placing every place setting, arranging the food in a perfect display, and orchestrating the tasks of the rest of my family. The bonfire was lit and tended to by the men, sandwiches and hors d'oeuvres crafted by my sister, my nieces dutifully carting out trays of food to the tables underneath the canopy in the back. I hadn’t had time to clean the floors, but for once, I didn’t really care. The people who were coming to our home to help us celebrate were hand-selected as our closest friends and family; their judgment was the last thing on my mind. I quietly washed the remaining dishes, impervious to the erratic and anxiety-filled energy of a housefull of busy bodies.
I glanced sideways to my older sister and said, “You know, I feel really relaxed today. I don’t feel stressed at all.” It had been a long three weeks of fervent “nesting” mode; I spent my days lugging around my big belly scrubbing baseboards and rearranging furniture. This was the first day that I was able to access a feeling of spaciousness. I finally felt settled, like all was going according to plan. I had a welcome sense of relief, and I was soaking it in like the raindrops on the mossy treetrunks lining our baby shower party.
“Well that’s good,” she huffed something of a mix between amusement and mild annoyance in response. She was busting her butt like the rest of them, so I made sure to fully turn and offer my gratitude to her. She didn’t have to be doing all this; none of them did. They had traveled over 700 miles, two campers, four dogs, and three kids in tow. All to help us get ready for our little boy to join us earthside. My eyes stung momentarily as I felt my heart swell with the thought. I blinked it away and let a small smile grace my lips, but I kept that orb of light in the center of my chest.
As eleven rolled around, so did our guests. But the sun was nowhere to be seen. Still, I felt strangely unbothered. I had an unfaltering grin on my face between greeting our guests as they arrived and shamelessly piling on snacks onto my plate, blaming the whole “eating for two” as my excuse.
I was mid-conversation with my older sister, remembering our premature younger brother who sadly passed away at the young age of two, when another guest arrived. I stood up and hid an embarrassed look when I suddenly felt a bit wet. Surely, I didn’t just pee myself? I walked the distance from the party tables to the house when I felt another gush, and immediately sped up my pace. I hastily greeted my next guest, showed them to the gift table, and mentioned where to find the food. I got caught by another guest offering to bring us food once the baby was born, and as I continued to feel more wet, I made a quick excuse about needing to use the restroom and disappeared into our master bedroom. I assessed my situation, changed my clothes, and felt every ounce of my much-deserved peace dissipate.
I emerged from the room and happened to catch my older sister, pulling her aside and asking in a hushed tone, “Has this ever happened to you?”
“No,” she replied wearily, her eyes widening and giving away her immediate concern. “Not until I was much farther along with Az.” At that moment my mother walked by, instinctually seeming to know something was amiss. I waved her off as my sister told me, “I think you better call your midwife.”
As I once again hid myself in my bedroom, heart racing and liquid continuing to flow, my fiance, Kris, opened the door and slid himself into the room quickly, shutting the door behind him as sounds of our party were picking up. His face faltered when his eyes met mine. I’ve never been able to mask my emotions well, and I know that fear was etched into every line in my face. I filled him in on what had happened and we got on the phone.
After explaining to the on-call midwife at our local hospital the situation, she didn’t dance around the question, asking quickly “Where are you now?”
“Forest Ranch,” I replied.
“Well, drive safely. We will be ready for you,” her tone leaving no room for deliberation, understanding that we had at least a thirty minute drive down a mountainous highway to get there, and time seemed to suddenly be of the essence.
I put on a change of clothes (again), grabbed the bare minimum of belongings, and directed my partner to let people know we were leaving. I couldn’t waste time trying to explain what was happening to anyone, let alone make any attempt to keep myself from falling apart to placate anyone else’s concerns. I made eye contact with a handful of guests that were still in the house, and I knew from their mirrored faces that my expression left nothing to be pondered.
As we peeled out of our driveway and down the mountain, I worked to steady my breath. Occasionally, I could feel another gush, each one sending a shockwave of fear through my body.
I had to admit to myself that my sacred waters had broken, ten weeks early, in the midst of my baby shower.
Once we arrived at the hospital’s maternity unit, we were asked to take a seat in the waiting room for a few minutes while they prepared my triage room. My knee was bouncing uncontrollably and my breath was so shallow I could barely make it past my throat. I stared ahead unblinking as two sets of excited grandparents babbled to one another the anticipation of their newest grandchild’s arrival. I did everything in my power to keep the tears from overflowing, but it took even more effort to bite my tongue when all I wanted to do was hear them shut the fuck up. One glance at my partner’s face and I knew it was taking every ounce of his restraint as well.
I muttered something along the lines of, “Let them be happy. It’s okay,” though I clearly saw the muscle in his jaw clench, as if forcefully keeping the words he wanted to say inside his throat.
Just then, the new father came to the waiting room, drenched in exhaustion, awe, and joy. The grandparents cheered, standing up to hug him and clap him on the back with their congratulations. The new-mother’s father pulled the new dad’s hand into his own and shook it with fervor, a bond forever solidifying. I squeezed my eyes shut as I heard him relay his wife’s strength and his own amazement at the miracle of birth, that their baby and mama are doing great but that was the most amazing and intense thing he’d ever witnessed.
My entire body flooded with grief at that moment. That should have been us. The reality that I would not get to live the situation I just watched play out overwhelmed my control and sobs broke my chest as I buried my face in my hands. It felt like a cruel joke. Kris’ arm wrapped around me and pulled me in, undeniably feeling the exact same thing I was.
Moments later, I heard a nurse call, “Jaelyn? We’re ready for you,” I erupted from my chair and pushed past the celebrating group. And for the first time, I think they finally grasped that their blissful ignorance was torturous to the couple sitting in the corner. Their expressions fell as they watched me nearly sprint down the hallway, clearly a couple months short of full term and tears streaming down my face.
The next thirty minutes was a flurry of IVs, “puppy pads,” hospital staff and explanations. It was quickly determined that I had indeed had a preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM). My nurse hooked me and my baby up to monitoring and determined that he was looking good; he was not experiencing the distress that I was. Because labor could be imminent, I was given magnesium sulfate to attempt to delay labor from beginning. I also received steroid shots to quickly help develop his lungs, as this is the last critical organ to mature.
The on-call midwife was a sweet, sage-like elder woman. We joked that she was the next midwife in the rotation I was scheduled to see in the practice, but we got to meet a bit sooner. Her energy was a welcome contrast to the on-call obstetrician, whose abrupt and direct demeanor did little to put me at ease as he said, “You have had a premature rupture of membranes. We don’t deliver babies under 34 weeks here, and since you are 30 weeks today, we’ve arranged a room for you at Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento. The flight crew will be here in thirty minutes and you’ll be transferred down there. They will try to keep you pregnant there as long as possible.”
My face surely crumpled, along with all my dreams of a beautiful and peaceful birth.
When we finally got a moment to ourselves in the tiny hospital room, my fiance and I started sobbing together. This was not how our birth of our first baby was supposed to go. There was no turning back; there was no reset button. The reality that I was inevitably going to have a premature baby hit me like a brick, and there was nothing to do now but hold each other and pray he wasn’t quite ready.
Within an hour, I was strapped to a gurney and squeezed into a Flight Care Air Ambulance helicopter headed to Sacramento. My partner and I exchanged teary goodbyes as I was lifted into the sky. I had always imagined that being ‘flight-for-life’d’ would involve excessive bleeding or severe injury. And yet there I was, basically just feeling like I had peed my pants. I managed a small chuckle to myself. I pulled out my phone and videoed the beautiful autumn day from the air, the clouds finally parted and the sun shone through just enough.
I landed on the rooftop of Sutter Medical Center just at sunset, the Sacramento skyline illuminated by brilliant rays of pink and gold. I tried to focus my attention on all the beauty, the kindness of my staff, and the hope that I could still deliver a healthy baby… I prayed that it wasn’t today.
The next twelve days were spent on bedrest, with limited wheelchair rides for fresh air and three meals a day delivered to my room. I watched from my sixth floor room as autumn in Sacramento painted the trees in reds, oranges, yellows and greens. I tried to make my days as uneventful as possible, spending hours coloring in mandalas, rekindling my childhood love for fantasy books, listening to meditations to calm myself, and mindlessly scrolling Instagram. I was put on monitoring twice a day every day for an hour at a time, where the soundtrack of my baby’s heartbeat was the anchor to my resilience.
My fiance spent every night tossing and turning on a pullout couch tucked underneath the window overlooking the Fabulous 40s neighborhood of East Sacramento. He faithfully spent every day with me, and hours would go by without so much as a word to each other. But his sheer presence, just having him nearby, eased the fear just a little bit. He’s always had a grounding presence for me, and he made it his job to bring me back to Earth the moment the panic set in. He was good at it, too – the heart rate monitors gave me away unmistakably.
Each day the doctors and nurses would congratulate me on staying pregnant another day, assuring me that every 24 hours keeping my bun baking in the oven was equivalent to 3 days in the NICU. About a week in, a charge nurse from the NICU came to our room to tell us what to expect from a NICU experience, and it was the first time that it all really hit me that there truly was no avoiding the inevitability that I’d have to face my greatest fear and childhood trauma.
My baby would undoubtedly experience the same scenario I witnessed at six years old with my younger brother, Nico – a tiny preemie in an incubator, hooked up to monitors, breathing apparatus, IVs and the like for his first days earthside.
I was shattered with grief; the dream I had of those first ‘golden hours’ holding my newborn to my chest, the first days of his life spent snuggled in bed, all that I had fantasized about those initial days together became just that – a fantasy. The reality set in that I had absolutely no control over avoiding the inevitable. I had been living in denial up until that point, resisting this truth with every ounce of my psychic energy.
Soon, anger flooded my system at the unfairness of it all. I had done everything “right.” I was young, healthy, and considered very “low risk” up until this freak accident. I blamed my body for failing me, for failing my baby. I blamed myself for doing “too much” when I should have just rested, and now I had potentially sabotaged the health of my child forever. I stood in the shower sobbing, beating my fists on the tile walls that felt painfully similar to a prison all of a sudden. Trapped. My baby’s life was no longer in my own hands. It was in the hands of a western medical system I had grown a deep seated resentment for over a lifetime of mistrust. I cursed the Universe for adding yet another excruciatingly painful challenge to my already-devastating year.
Days rolled by, marked by a whole lot of nothing. Glances at the clock that seemed to mock me as a reminder that the rest of the world was still spinning and yet, I was at a complete standstill. The bargaining began in my mind – if I could just get to 35 weeks, he might avoid the NICU altogether. That’s what the doctors said, right? They’ll induce me at 35 weeks, and if he can breathe on his own, we will get to go home. This hope became my mantra, one day at a time.
The day before the Full Moon in Taurus, on the 13th of November, my father and little sister came out from Colorado for a scheduled visit, and changed their plans to stay in Sacramento instead of our plans to get ready for baby at our home. My sister teared up when she saw me in my hospital bed, rushing over to hug me. My dad carried a heavy, nervous energy that he tried hard to hide behind his wide smile and charismatic blue eyes. Their company was the light I needed in one of the darkest times of my life, and I relished in the normalcy of their entertaining banter and characteristic warmth. I remembered what it felt like to laugh again as they argued over who was more trustworthy to captain my wheelchair around the block. Joy had felt like a long lost friend at this point and their company was the sunlight that broke through my thunderclouds for the first time in days. But even that reached an expiration point, when a nagging feeling in the back of my mind started getting louder by the hour.
By the time my dinner had arrived in my room, they had taken their leave. Sitting in front of my pork chop and chocolate ice cream, I had to admit to myself that that nagging feeling wasn’t just in my head anymore – it was coming from my uterus. As I sipped my tea, I pulled up a timer on my phone to track the sensations I could no longer deny.
Five minutes.
Every five minutes, a gentle nudge arrived from my womb. I felt like maybe if I kept it a secret from my nurse, from my partner who had trusted me enough to leave for the first night in two weeks, from my family, that maybe this wouldn’t be it. Maybe I could ignore it long enough and I'd still wake up pregnant tomorrow.
An hour passed and my denial was clearly not slowing the inevitable. I asked my nurse to hook me up for my monitoring early, and she gave me a sideways glance and asked, “Are you having contractions?”
I sheepishly smiled and replied, “Well, I’m having some light cramping…every five minutes.”
She raised her eyebrows at me and asked how long I had been keeping track and what my pain level was at, weary of my hesitancy to answer. She hooked me up to my monitors and told me she’d be watching them from the nurses’ station, but to let her know if they were getting worse. I thanked her and said I would.
She reappeared in my room an hour later, pointing out matter-of-factly the massive contractions the monitors revealed, dissipating any question on “if” my labor was beginning. “Are you sure you don’t want to call your fiance? I mean, I’m sorry to say it but you’re most likely having this baby tonight. I think you want him to be here sooner rather than later.”
I called Kris several minutes later, my voice a dead-giveaway. My nervous tell has always been inappropriate laughter. I giggled and said, “Soooo… I’m having contractions. Real ones. I think this might be it.”
I could see his face falling in my mind’s eye as his voice replied fearfully, “Really? How long have you been having contractions?”
“Yeah. Really. And ummm…a few hours…I think you oughta come.” I replied.
“Okay…” there was a long pause between his next words. “I’ll leave now. Be there in a couple hours. Don’t have the baby without me.”
“Please drive safely. And don’t worry, it’ll be a long process. Don’t rush. I’ll see you soon,” I answered in a bashful voice. I hung up the phone with a small feeling of guilt that he had finally decided to spend one night at home for the first time since my water broke. Now, he’d make the 112 mile journey once again, but this time, with the anxiety of a fiance in premature labor.
I took the two hours it took for him to arrive to mentally prepare myself, to meditate and be in my own energy. I welcomed the contractions as they arrived, now increasing in intensity, and inviting them forward with my breath. I felt sheer power rise from my root and expand through my spine, all the way to the crown of my head like a wave. I saw kaleidoscopic mandalas of vibrant hues manifest in my mind’s eye every time a contraction crested at the top of my head. Each one new, each one unique and absolutely unreplicable, even if I had the skills to render them through art. I practiced with my breath like that for a long time.
Open, soften, receive. Open, soften, receive. Open, soften, receive. The cadence kept me grounded while I awaited my partner’s arrival.
By the time he entered my hospital room, greeting me with a very thorough head-to-toe examination and eyes filled to the brim with lassitude, my contractions had transformed from a Taurean, springtime Persephone to a dark goddess’ harrowing descent into the Plutonic underworld.
For the hours that proceeded, I plunged deeper and deeper into the all-consuming darkness of pain, abandoning all of the stillness I had meticulously curated for myself at the beginning. Time ceased to exist; there was only pain, and a heartbeat of reprieve in between contractions that I looked forward to with desperation. My body became a beast of its own, writhing on the hospital bed, sounds escaping from deep in my diaphragm that had origins only birthed from agony. My partner nearly begged me to take pain medication, feeling utterly helpless to my agonized pleas for relief. My ego was holding strong for timeless hours, but eventually the earth-shattering agony happening inside me was enough to break it. Something inside me knew that I could not truly surrender in the face of such excruciating pain.
Sometime in the early morning hours, I accepted a small dose of pain-reliever after discovering that my hours and hours of contractions that felt like they were breaking my body apart from the inside had done absolutely nothing to dilate my cervix. At some point, I attempted to use the bathroom, but quickly realized that my face was moments away from smacking into the tiles in front of me as my eyes rolled to the back of my head, painting stars in my vision like slot machines in a hazy lonesome casino. I called for help, and there was no hesitation as my nurse and fiance rushed in and gripped either of my shoulders with milliseconds to spare. My head slumped forward limp with exhaustion as my nurse’s voice anchored me to my body, coaching me to take deep breaths.
“Keep your eyes open, stay here with us,” her voice a demand I could barely heed. I don’t know how I did it – a heavy dose of adrenaline and the instinct to protect my baby at all costs I guess. A wheelchair was summoned to retrieve me, and I never did get to pee. I was carefully moved back to my bed to continue my torment.
“God” and my partner’s name were the only words my mouth could form as my body contorted, desperately trying to escape my pain, as if I could move myself out of its way. Had my circumstances been different, maybe I would have walked around, squatted on the earthen ground or wrapped my arms around my lover’s strength and let gravity hold us. But that was the long-forgotten fantasy, and this was my current reality. I labored on my back, tangled up in monitors and IV tubes and sweaty sheets.
When I finally gave up my ego long enough to accept that it was not bigger than the pain I was facing, my cervix dilated to 3 centimeters and the door opened to my freedom. The nursing staff wheeled my bed to labor and delivery through a blaringly bright hallway, a spectacle of Mother Nature’s ferocity past seasoned eyes and baffled onlookers alike. Within moments, an anesthesiologist was at the ready, needle primed for my spine.
“A walking epidural,” they said. “Half strength, until you need the full one.”
A sensation of peace flowed through me as I learned the medicine of an ego-death and surrender into support. I could still feel my contractions, but I was once again able to witness them rather than try to run. With my pain quelled, I could finally stop fighting my body and relax – it had been nearly 17 hours, but time had meant nothing to me by then.
My nurse invited me to rest, maybe nap. Drink some water. Eat some food. They’ll be back to check on me. She left with a soft smile and said she would be back to check on me sometime. By her inflection in her tone, it was clear she thought I had several, maybe many, hours left to go.
It was no longer than 45 minutes by the time I used the phone connected to my hospital bed to call her back and tell her I felt my baby descending and I was ready to push. She arrived in my room with the same posturing that made me feel as though she was placating my naivety, but again smiled and let me know she could check me once more if I’d like.
Moments later, her eyebrows shot up as she was checking me and exclaimed, “I can feel hair! You’re right, he’s coming!” I had a smug satisfaction realizing I was right – my baby was already halfway down my birth canal. The instinct to push hadn’t evaded me with my ‘half-epidural’. She hurriedly rounded up the support staff and called for Dr. McElvy, the on-call obstetrician who luckily was the one who had received me on my very first day.
Within a minute, I was moving into my position, the instinct to push exciting my mind and body. I didn’t care who made it to the room on time, it was his timing. My baby was ready to meet me. I crawled onto the bed backwards and held onto the uprighted headrest, knocking my knees in and kicking my ankles out to open the back of my pelvis, which had been confined to the bed not only for the duration of my labor, but of the last 12 days, too.
By the time everyone had made it into the room from their various posts, I was surrendering to the contractions again and using my breath to lean into their now-downward movement. At some point I heard behind me, “Is it okay for her to be in this position?” To which Dr. McElvy replied, “Well this is how she has already decided to do it so this is how we’re going to try until we have to change it.” I guess my positioning was a bit primal at best, uncouth at worst. There was not a flying fuck in the world that let me feel embarrassed for even just one moment – my entire body and mind was laser-focused on the sensations of birthing my baby into the world.
With Kris holding my hand at the top of the bed and two nurses at my other side, coaching me through my contractions and becoming pillars of strength as I moved across the threshold of maiden to mother. Animalistic moans, snarls and cries punctuated every push, fear of judgment far from my mind. My vocalizations filled the room with a charge; Mother Nature’s power and strength as I became Her. The power of the Goddess, the primitive nature of Woman. Drawing upon instinct and ancestry, I pushed through the ‘ring of fire’ and felt my son arrive on this earthly plane.
The entire experience, though to me felt utterly timeless, only took about twenty minutes. I rolled to my back and Dr. McElvy’s gloved hands handed me my precious baby boy to lay on my pounding heart. He let out a wail all on his own and his sticky, squirmy little body against mine activated every ounce of oxytocin in my reserves.
I fucking did it. He’s here, and he’s stunning.
I studied his puffy, red little face, feeling both completely shattered and the most powerful I’ve ever been simultaneously. My partner clamped his cord once the tube was clear of blood, and all too soon, the ALS (Advanced Life Support) nurses said something about him being ‘grunty’ and carefully, yet swiftly, pulled him from my arms to the warming bed to hook him up to oxygen and transfer him to the 7th floor.
Still in a daze, the doctor let me know that they were going to take my baby up to the NICU and dad would be accompanying him the entire time, but that I was to stay and recover for as long as I needed until I was ready to go up and see him. I had too much adrenaline pulsing through my body to let myself feel the absolute devastation of watching him be carted away just minutes after getting to hold him for the first time. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but I couldn’t let myself feel that grief yet while I still had to be strong.
My partner kissed the top of my head, whispering, “I love you Jaelyn, you did such a good job. I’m going to go be with our son, I’ll see you soon.” He tried to hide the worry on his face but I met his gaze with what I hoped to be was the ferocity of a warrior woman that I felt like. My fight was not over yet.
My nurses stayed with me, bringing a tray of food, a giant sugary soda, and a jug of water to my bedside, accompanied by genuine words of congratulations and praise for an excellent delivery. Their eyes were alight with the same magic I had felt coursing through my body just minutes before; the charge of energy still vibrating through the room. But exhaustion overtook my mind and body, and I sat in a concoction of wonder and disbelief that it was over. My baby boy was “here” – I tried not to think too hard on how that “here” was not here. Or how unnatural it felt that he was whisked away from me so quickly, that I should be wrapped in the love of those crucial “golden hours,” blissfully snuggling my brand new baby. Not that his nurses and doctors were currently in the process of ensuring his survival on the way to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit on the floor above me. I tried to focus on gratitude that we were blessed with knowledgeable, professional aid for the inevitable, but it was impossible to ignore that when they left the room, they took a piece of my soul with them.
We decided to name our son Atlas, to reflect the sheer strength and resilience he had taught us throughout my pregnancy and his birth story. We knew that this four-pound two-ounce baby boy had the strength of a Titan within him, and would teach us more about endurance than anything else ever could.
The proceeding days were a blur of hormones, meetings with various hospital staff, and postpartum recovery, with every available moment spent next to him in the NICU. Born at 31 weeks and 5 days, Atlas’ lungs had yet to fully develop and neither had the ability to regulate his own body temperature or take food by mouth. Gazing at my son from the outside of an incubator window was probably the most painful experience I’d ever had, every instinct in my body reaching out to hold him to my chest. His first days on Earth were isolated, hooked up to monitors, IVs, and a bubble CPAP for respiration support. His tiny lungs retracted as he struggled to take in air into his lungs, a clunky IV strapped into his petite arm, wires and tubes surrounding him like a thicket. A symphony of beeps and alarms and monitors filled the airspace around him. Though my heart was battered, it kept beating for him. Faith was the drum beat that kept my rhythm for me while the rest of my world dissolved.
The first few days were emotionally intense, but as the days rolled on, we found a routine that worked to (mostly) keep my panic at bay. I moved from the hospital’s postpartum room, to a couple nights in boujee hotel across the street courtesy of my social worker, to an Airbnb fund-raised by my sister for two weeks, then finally to the Sacramento Ronald McDonald House Charity for another two weeks. Every day, I’d wake up, feed myself, and scurry to Sutter Medical Center, checking in at the front desk with my bag of snacks and pumping equipment and heading up the elevator to the 7th floor. I’d all but run to his bedside, greeting a new nurse each morning. I would spend the next eight to twelve hours sitting in a chair next to his bed, reading my Kindle and doing his ‘cares’ with the nurses every three hours on the dot. By eight o’clock (yet usually later), I would tear myself away from his bedside and make my way back to wherever I was sleeping, heat up some dinner, pump breastmilk every 3 hours and sleep in between until I woke up the next day to do it all again. My life became Groundhog Day and I often wondered how long I’d have to keep this up. If I let myself think too hard about it, the tears would flood over me and I would lose the grip I had on my emotions.
My partner had responsibilities back home, so he was only able to make the trip back and forth every couple days. We have always been a team unit, but this took our companionship to a whole new level. We had a mutual understanding that this was what parenthood was at this point, a strategy of “divide and conquer” and both doing what needed to be done to get through this time. My responsibility was taking care of myself, so I could pump breastmilk to feed our baby and be by his side. He was taking care of the rest. We often expressed gratitude for one another’s sacrifices and I became even more certain that I had chosen my life partner correctly.
We spent 36 days like that, on top of our 12 since leaving home. I reminded myself that Atlas’ journey home would be non-linear – there would be days where it felt like taking two steps forward and one step back. And that was quite true. I sent all of my prayers, intentions, and wishes towards being able to bring him home in time for Christmas.
Atlas would progress forward and lose a piece of equipment, showing me more and more of my son with each contraption removed from his body. First, he graduated off the bubble CPAP. Next, he lost the IVs. Then, the pulse oximeter. His monitors kept track of his “A’s & B’s” (apneas and bradycardias), but each day he went without either of these occurrences was another win. It took a couple weeks of low blood sugar levels and keeping his food down, but eventually, the feeding tube was the last to go. I celebrated each win with a heartful ‘Thank You’ to our angels, as it meant we were closer and closer to going home.
Eventually, my accommodations had run out and the weight of having to drive back and forth to Sacramento was an unwelcome anchor when all I wanted was to celebrate some air in my sails. The anxiety kicked back in full-force. But still, deep within, there was a flame of hope in my chest. Maybe the timing could align – after all, he was showing more and more strength every day.
Just two days after losing my accommodations in Sacramento and being home in Forest Ranch, painfully away from my baby for the longest stretch of time since his birth, Atlas’ doctor called. With a large smile I could hear over the phone, he declared Atlas was ready to come home with us and to make our arrangements for pickup. Our joy was immense as we made the last commute down to Sacramento together.
As we walked down the all-too familiar halls of the NICU with Atlas in tow, we were greeted with cheers, applause, and smiles from staff. My chest heaved with the sobs I tried to silence, tears streaming down my face. As I smiled through them with a face contorted with emotion, I nodded my thanks to all of the amazing people who have dedicated their careers to saving babies. The immensity of our gratitude could not be articulated through words, though I hope my face could show it. My partner and I cried tears of joy as we walked out of the doors of Sutter Medical Center for the last time, finally with our baby boy in our arms.
Atlas and I’s journey together is a story of strength, resilience, hope, and the mysteries of motherhood. Today, my Scorpio Sun - Taurus Moon - Aquarius Rising son is happy, healthy, growing and comfortable. He is a smiley, cuddly, curious little guy with a strong body and big spirit. He may face more challenges to come, but we are certain he has the strength to face anything that may come his way.
This initiation into motherhood tested the very fabric of my being. It stripped away my ego and humbled me in ways that only facing my greatest fears in the face could. Prior to this experience, I had never spent one night in a hospital bed. I carried a deep mistrust of the western medical system. But through this experience I learned that there has to be room for both – a mother’s innate maternal intuition and the science that is studiously developed through logic and fact.
I can recite my prayers while weighing a doctor’s opinion.
I can call upon my ancestors to hold me while I surrender to necessary medical interventions.
I can anchor my spirit into the earth’s wisdom while I lay in a sterile environment.
I can use energy healing to pour unconditional love and healing into my baby while he receives medications.
I can use my voice to advocate what I feel is right, while also following necessary procedures.
I can continue to choose earth-based wisdom and alternative methods for health and wellness, though I will no longer fear the advancements we’ve made through the scientific approach.
The two sides of this coin are both necessary and effective, each having their place for healing.
Spirituality is not separate from science. It belongs in every space that facts and data do, because it provides the grounding and meaning that science alone cannot. Isn’t that what we practice it for? To anchor us in the moments where everything crumbles and all that is left is our faith? To lean on when circumstances are outside of our control and there is nothing to hold onto except our mindset?
I pray that our story is one that inspires, remedies, and comforts those who are navigating a chaotic turn of events. My story is unique to me, but the essence is the same across humanity – Motherhood is the most powerful initiation, and the Goddess is always going to give a woman what lessons she needs in order to become worthy of the title “Mother.”
And for this I am certain – God is a Woman.
Written By: Jaelyn Kohl
AUTHOR’S NOTES
My heart and my respect goes out for the anxious mamas-to-be, the high-risk mamas, the mamas with babes in the NICU, the mamas weathering pregnancy loss, the mamas still waiting for their baby to conceive, the mamas who had to make choices they didn’t want or prepare for, the mamas who don’t get their happy ending.
May you anchor into the strength of all the women who have come before you, and may the next generations inherit it from you.
And a very special and full-hearted “thank you” to everyone who kept Atlas and I in your prayers and those who supported us emotionally, financially, and physically. I genuinely believe the power of collective prayer had a massive impact on his ability to overcome. My gratitude is endless.
