April 24
There’s a kind of strength that isn’t loud.
It doesn’t post updates or give inspirational speeches.
It just shows up—exhausted, broken, terrified. But present.
That was me.
Still bleeding.
Still aching.
Still leaking milk I wasn’t sure she’d ever get to drink.
Still trying to be okay when everything around me was falling apart.
They discharged me before her.
That’s something no one tells you about.
You don’t just walk out of a hospital with a baby in your arms like the movies.
Sometimes, you walk out with a folder, a few reminders to rest, and an emptiness so sharp it presses into your ribs.
It was raining. Not a gentle rain—the kind that feels like grief made visible.
They wheeled me out while I was still sore and bleeding. My body was hollowed out. My arms were empty.
But instead of going home to rest, we drove to the WIC office.
We hadn’t had time to plan for any of this. Not even the simple things.
We needed a breast pump.
It felt like the only thing I could do.
So I stood in line—still bleeding, still recovering—surrounded by mothers holding their babies, toddlers wrapped around their legs, little ones wiggling and whining and playing.
I watched them and felt like I didn’t belong.
They looked tired—but they also looked full.
Whole.
And I was standing there… hollow and shattered.
My baby was alive, but I wasn’t holding her. I wasn’t rocking her.
I was standing under fluorescent lights pretending not to fall apart in public.
When I returned to the hospital, the energy was different.
Heavier. Louder.
The oscillator accompanied the ventilator.
It filled the room with a deep, mechanical roar—a haunting sound that became the background music of my fear. That machine was breathing for her now. The ventilator wasn’t enough anymore.
Doctors came in quietly, more focused than usual.
They had started epinephrine, trying to regulate her heart rate.
Then vasopressin—a second line of defense to stabilize her blood pressure.
I heard words like critical, fragile, and watching closely.
I was already unraveling—but this pushed me to the edge of something I didn’t have words for.
Her third round of surfactant. Trying to help her lungs. Trying to keep her from drowning inside her own body.
Trying everything.
I looked up at one point and counted the pumps—twenty or so it felt.
Twenty individual medication lines running simultaneously.
Each one delivering something she needed just to make it to the next moment.
Her 6th blood transfusion in six days of life.
All those medications.
All that machinery.
All of it… just to keep her here.
The Fight No One Sees
People don’t talk about this version of motherhood.
The kind where love means memorizing machine patterns.
The kind where your voice is a whisper behind plastic, and your prayers feel like quiet negotiations with heaven.
I was fighting.
Fighting to stay calm.
Fighting to keep pumping.
Fighting to believe my presence mattered.
Fighting to stay present for my son while my heart was tethered to her.
No one talks about the strength it takes to not fall apart in a room full of beeping alarms.
To look at twenty pumps and not scream.
To thank the nurse and ask intelligent questions when all you want to do is collapse.
Still—I stayed.
Still—I fought.
Because she was still fighting, too.
And I would not let her fight alone.
There was a chair beside her incubator—It became my place. The world outside that glass never stopped, but for me, everything paused inside that space.
Sometimes I sat with my hands folded, praying.
Sometimes I cried so quietly no one noticed.
I didn’t feel strong. I felt broken.
But I showed up. And I stayed.
And maybe that was enough.
The Story Between Storms 
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