After delivery of the placenta, skin to skin for 30 minutes (regardless of feeding method)
The copperplate hand of my twenty-three-year-old self
Studiously documenting labour
A recipe to follow with times, weights, measures
Apgar score assessed at 1 and 5 minutes
Our reality so different;
You lifted out by another's hands, placed in perspex breathless and blue.
You clothed in bespoke ventilator cap
knitted by creased hands and kind hearts.
Your life force delivered through pumps and plastic.
The placenta should be delivered within 1 hour
Me unconscious, delirious, trapped by medicine's shackles
Spilt cells circling back into my veins
An ache in my heart so visceral it holds me down
Weighted to this bed.
My body whole
only a new scar to carry
perpetual reminder of this night's promise.
My hope that pooled on floors, stairs and clothing
Now lives, breathes and is.
eLetters
No eLetters have been published for this article.