Everything in me screamed that he should be in my arms, yet I was barely allowed to touch him. Just hours before he had been safe inside my body. Deprived of a natural arrival into this world, he had instead been snatched abruptly by C-section. Having spent his entire life with me until that point, having been cradled within the very center of my existence, he was then expected to survive happily without so much as the sound of my voice. How terrified must he have been?

I wish I could tell you that I have confidence in those who were instructing me, but I don't. I don't trust that they were right. Maybe they were, but I'm not convinced. Might he have died if they hadn't taken him by C-section? I don't know. I'm not sure our delivery time was right at all. My water had mysteriously broken after an exam by my doctor, who then, after hours of forced attempts to bring on labor, had to break my water again, which had sealed off. I doubt the whole situation, and I have very little trust in any professional, to this day. I'm afraid we (or someone) robbed nature of its opportunity to naturally birth my child.

Please don't tell me to be happy that things turned out well in the end. I'm so tired of hearing that, because I AM happy that Sam is well. How could I not be? Amazingly, that does little to ease the pain and the scars that were left because of the trauma. It's a feeling of having been robbed. I realize that there may be no one to blame, but to this day I wish I knew what happened -- what REALLY happened.

I'm smart enough to know that if there was any kind of medical negligence, it has long since been buried and will never be discovered. Different people who know of the situation want me to be happy and grateful to the medical staff who supposedly saved Sam, and healed him and made him better. I'm struggling with that, because I suspect they were only remedying a bad situation that they created. Our mysterious infections after birth, from which no cultures grew, were most likely staph infections caused by them. 21 hours of labor AFTER my water initially broke (or was broken) is dangerously near too long to have waited to deliver Sam. Why did they wait? Why wasn't I eventually given antibiotics -- if for no reason other than precautionary measures, knowing the increased rate of chance of infection with my water having already broken so much earlier?

Believe me, I have tried -- but I cannot remember the day that Sam was born with joy. Or the second day. Or the third day. Or the fourth day. It's a memory that fills me so instantly with pain that I choke on an urge to sob. I DO remember the fifth day of his life with a feeling of completeness -- that moment when I first held him in my arms and smelled his head. I remembering instructing myself to remember every second of that reunion, and in spite of my self-admonition, I don't remember the details, but instead an overwhelming feeling of love.

I knew that I would never be complete had I lost him at any point after the moment of his conception. He was my son and I was his mother instantly, and the day he left my body to live in this world, he became no more my son than he had already been.