Silence

We didn't talk often. He was a premature baby, weighing barely over a pound and with a tube shoved down his throat, so he was not expected to say much. But parents are supposed to talk to their babies from the moment of conception, practically. Mom, baby will hear your voice constantly and come to recognize it. Dad, you are not physically attached, so talk to Mom's belly. Play classical music at your uterus to gain some bonus IQ points. Read to your baby in utero so he will be an early reader.

If your baby, still within you or having arrived in the outside world, is sick, talk to him. Tell her to fight and hang on. It will help.

I am an extrovert, and I used to talk for a living. This is advice I could have followed in my sleep. But I didn't.

Two months of bed rest at home provided plenty of quiet, down time to talk to my baby, defying the odds and growing normally despite my continually disintegrating placenta. A third month of bed rest in the hospital provided more time: often panicked, but time, just the same. But it just didn't occur to me to speak audibly to my baby.

For one thing, I didn't know his name yet, because I didn't know his gender until he was born (even though I "knew" from the very beginning). I would have felt terrible calling him by the wrong name.

But I never felt the urge or the need to speak out loud. I would sit there and stare at my tiny belly and wonder if it was growing, and I would whisper in my head, "Come on, baby. What's going on in there?" There were thoughts I couldn't (and still can't) put into words-thoughts of love, hopeful pleadings, and fear-but I would transfer them to him anyway.

I was alone so often that he did not hear my voice constantly. But he had plenty to listen to. There was the fetal heart rate monitor that I am convinced sounded like a freight train to him. He hated that thing; he would move away every time. It made me smile: he was my feisty one!

And there was my heartbeat. It has been said that our babies are the only ones who know the sound of our hearts from the inside. Given the figurative and literal chaos my body was stirring up, my heartbeat was the only physical steadiness he ever had from me. I didn't have to say a word. And what could I have possibly said, anyway? What words could transcend the comfort of my heartbeat? It was his lullaby, his metronome indicating that the rhythm of his world was still steady. It was an audible reminder to him that he was part of me.

Until it wasn't. The sound of my heartbeat was replaced with the sound of beeping monitors and constant medical-speak. We were hopeful.

We spent many hours at his side, of course, but our faces were mostly separated by a wall of plexi-glass. There were holes for our arms, so we could touch him.

Mostly, I would stand or sit there, just staring. Maybe I subconsciously knew he was hearing way too much noise already; after all, he should still be listening to my heartbeat. So I kept quiet. The blanket over his bed, when folded a certain way, provided perfect padding for my forehead, so I could relax a bit when becoming stiff after hours of cocking my arm at a weird angle in order to put my hand around him.

And I would talk to him, silently: tell him how perfect and beautiful he is, how tiny, how tenacious, how much I wished his lungs would strengthen, how many people love him, and how much I love him. He "heard" me every time: his vital signs would improve almost immediately upon my touch.

One author, writing about her premature baby in the NICU, would walk away from her baby's bedside whenever the doctors wanted to talk to her. She wanted to be strong for her baby, not cry in front of him. Not me. My son became an old soul quickly: I didn't spare him any emotions. When medical staff gave me bad news from time to time, I stayed at his bedside. Then, I would put my forehead back on that blanket, vision blurred by tears, and plead to him, silently again, to please defy the odds.

Before he died, I had never really seen death, unless you include what I had seen in the movies or read about in books. When people die on the screen or on the pages of a book, their parents or other loved ones inevitably let out a scream, a noise, or some other indescribable sound upon the discovery that their loved one is dead. And the loved ones, if they are there, talk to them, comforting them as they leave this world.

When I walked into the NICU that hot July morning to see my son, my flesh and blood, non-responsive to full resuscitation efforts, I knew what it meant immediately. Yet I did not scream. I did not cry. When they handed him to me for only the second time ever, knowing it would be last time I would hold my living baby, even then I stayed quiet.

There was activity around us. Medical staff wanted to make sure the three of us were physically comfortable, and then they moved us to a private room. People continued to filter in and out: the physician to check his heartbeat periodically to determine the time of death, the nurses, some family members. I have a vague memory of the activity, but mostly I remember my son's weight in my arms, his smell, his peaceful face, finally unencumbered by tubes and wires, as he took his last breaths. And still, I was silent.

For the first and only time, I rocked my baby. They happened to seat me in a rocking chair, and I rocked him for hours in that chair, long after he had passed. Silently.

And I held him close to my chest. Maybe he heard that reassuring thump-thump-thump of my heartbeat then: the audible reminder of my steadfast, perpetual love for him. It was, perhaps, the first and last sound he heard on this earth.

Later, I would learn that hearing is one of the last bodily functions to cease. For a while, I cursed myself for not talking to him as he was leaving this earth.

But he and I should have had a lifetime to communicate. I should have had daily opportunities to live my love for him. How could I possibly sum up all we would miss in the forty-five minutes from when he was placed in my arms until he breathed his last?

And what could I have said to an extension of myself? What words would I speak, for example, to my heart or my brain? They ARE me, they embody me; what words of explanation or affection would enlighten them further?

No, I have never talked to myself, at least not out loud. My monologues take place internally. So it stands to reason that my son, an extension of me, needs no audible sound to hear me. He is loved beyond description, and he knows it.

He was physically wrenched from me long before he should have been. My body felt, and still feels, the wrenching, and his body felt it so profoundly that it ceased to function.

But a mother's love, it transcends the body. Which means that it transcends the five senses. And a mother's love transcends language. Ever silent, my love is with him even now. Of this I am certain.

~

I don't want to talk right now
I just want your arms wrapped around
Me in this moment
Before it runs out

Oh don't say that it's over
Oh no say it ain't so
Let's let the stars watch
Let them stare
Let the wind eavesdrop
I don't care
For all that we've got, don't let go
Just hold me

The Civil Wars, Eavesdrop