Kneading

The first time two nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit place her weightless body on my chest so I can hold her skin to skin, she sticks to me like a hand kneading dough that begs for flour. I sit in a rocking chair but brace against movement, against breathing, although the nurses claim my breath and my heartbeat have the power to regulate hers. She is nothing like I thought my baby would be. She is not supple plump rolls that bounce back. She is skin translucent red-purple and molting, ribs like curved toothpicks, respiration forced by plastic tubing. She is hourly pencil ticks of blood gasses, her every internal enzymatic process reflected on a chart. She is monitors dinging cruelly, saying do something now before her heart stops or she stops breathing or her temperature climbs too high or infection causes her thin skin to burn, layers shedding like sheets of phyllo. Until now, she is watched her through the plexiglass hood of her isolette, the microclimate for thermoregulation, for shielding against contagion. The womb that sustains her because mine couldn’t. But receiving her from the nurses’ hands and letting her rest against my body feels like […]