“You have to master your mind.” This is what the Doula said to my daughter.

Most people have not and never will experience the pain of labor. It is painful, relentless and cruel. Joanna said in order to deal with the pain, she had to visualize scenes of beauty or happiness she has experienced and mentally transport herself away from a room in a hospital filled with pain and anxiety.

Mastering the mind. Joanna had that part mastered. If that skill was all that was required, she would have quickly been done with labor and would be a mother. Nothing went according to the Birth Plan. Nothing went right.

On Thursday, her water broke, but she didn’t go into labor. She and her husband went to the hospital that night. The midwife gave her something but it didn’t start labor, so they started pitocin at 3:00 a.m. Friday morning. She progressed very slowly, and ended up getting an epidural to try to speed labor along. Had an infection, the night went on forever, but her doula and midwife were encouraging her, told her that the baby was handling the labor well, and it seemed that she was too. Then at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning a doctor came in and said that a c-section must be performed. She had previously been told that a C-section was a possibility, and she actually asked for a C-section at around 1:00 a.m. that morning, but the midwife assured her that things were progressing well. So everyone said why get a C-section if you don’t have to? Everyone wishes with all their heart now that the C-section had been performed hours earlier.

During the C-section, Joanna lost half of the blood in her body. She was dilated at a 9 when they performed the operation, so the baby’s head was getting ready to be born the natural way, and it was hard for them to get the baby out. The baby aspirated fluid with meconium in it, and had to be taken immediately to the NICU. They started sewing Joanna up, and her blood pressure crashed, they gave her two transfusions of blood in the operating room while they were sewing her up. She had to have another transfusion in the recovery room. But, thank God, she was out of danger. For some reason, when the midwife said that Joanna had an infection and was at an increased risk of hemorrhaging, I immediately started crying and praying for God not to take her from me. I was terrified that she could bleed to death, and I would lose her like I lost Billy. I did this quietly but with all my heart.

The beautiful baby, later named Luna, weighed 9 lb 5 oz and was 21 inches long. She was ready to come into this world. Her condition quickly turned serious, and the doctors determined that she had an infection of some kind, along with the aspiration problem that had filled her lungs with fluid. They put her on a CPAP machine, but by the next day she was intubated. She had 2 seizures, so they had put electrodes on her head to measure her brain waves to try to determine the cause. They were giving her a lot of medications for infection and to prevent seizures. Her blood counts were low, so she had to have a transfusion. Joanna’s husband, Nick, was talking to the doctors and nurses, trying to keep it all straight, and staying by her side.

I got to lay my eyes on Luna today. I couldn’t hold her, no one can right now. She’s always asleep because of her medications. I went to see her with Joanna and we talked to her while we stroked her legs and little belly and told her how much we loved her. We reminded her how brave she was, how strong. We told her to be fierce and to fight. Joanna sang to her, I told her a story, Nick read to her. The rules are that only parents can be in the room, or one parent with one visitor. The sweet nurse let us all be in the room at the same time. It was so wonderful. I prayed over her, and I marveled at her. I am in love with her. She must get better because we cannot stand another loss. It would literally break my daughter. Please God, please God, please God heal her. Please.

I have been asking Billy and my mom to plead with God on Luna’s behalf.

I wish you were here so much, Billy. I wish you were here to help me get through this, to help Joanna and Nick get through this. We all wish you could meet your new granddaughter.

There is no “mastering of the mind” here. We are afraid and wondering, how did we get here? We are angry that Joanna & Nick weren’t given the information they needed to make an informed decision.