By Elisa Cinelli 
I was terrified when I arrived at the hospital for the birth of my first baby. On the way to the delivery room, though, we passed the recovery ward. I caught a glimpse of a brand new mom reclining on her bed next to a clear bassinet with a tiny new person swaddled up inside.
There was such a feeling of serenity in that room, and I used the image to help me face my fear of labor and delivery. I had seen what was on the other side, and I just had to get there.
But, after a long and painful delivery, I wasn’t able to take the serene woman’s place. A couple of hours after I met my baby Kiara, she was taken into the neonatal intensive care unit while I was instructed to stay in my recovery room.
This room became an island with an abyss of identical hallways separating me from my child. She was poked and prodded and attached to wires, left alone under a loud beeping monitor while I hobbled through the labyrinth trying to memorize which signs would take me to her and learned to use a breast pump.
When it came time for me to give birth for the second time, I prayed for no NICU stay. I prepared myself mentally for the possibility though, and I didn’t tell anyone but my immediate family when I went in. I didn’t want to deal with family at the hospital while so many unknowns hung in the air or while a mass of wires might stand between me and my newborn’s perfect, smooth body.
My prayers were answered. Julia was placed on my chest and not even taken from me to be weighed right away. The experience was completely different.
My room was again an island, but this time it was an oasis in the dark sea of the world where my baby and I could exist as the one being we were meant to exist as, undisturbed by anything at all. My body and my mind remained still as the healing process began.
After my first birth, my baby was a patient, and no one—not even I—remembered that I was one too. Neither my mental nor my physical needs could be attended to within the tornado my baby faced on her own. I couldn’t care about my need to rest, only how long it would take me to make it to Kiara’s room one more time.
When Julia didn’t need any specialized care, I realized she wasn’t actually a patient at all. She was simply a baby who was still at the hospital only because I had not yet been discharged. She was simply with me. The way she was supposed to be.
by Lynsie O'Shaughnessy 
by Jillian Benfield 
