The Birth of Esther Ferreira Villamil Martins

I woke up at 6 am with the feeling that I was loosing fluid. I got up quickly... "Am I so sleepy that my body decided to lose pee instead of waking up?"

I was really tired. Five hours earlier I had attended the birth of Henrique. I was tired but very happy. It was a beautiful natural birth in the delivery room at the Hospital of Unimed. His parents, Monica and Paulo, were super happy with everything that had happened. Isabel and I had returned home that night with our souls renewed.

But the liquid that was flowing from inside of me was not my tired bladder. I got up and it kept on leaking. I stood in the bathroom unable to think about anything. Esther was by then 36 weeks, we had agreed she would stay in her little house for as long as she wanted, and I asked a lot to her to stay up to 42 weeks, but we knew I could not control this time...

"Quésia, what happened?" - Arthur murmured, bothered by the lights coming from the bathroom...

"Honey, there is a liquid leaking ..." "May it be pee?" "I think it is .." - I still could not wake him up with reality..." So finish your pee and let’s sleep more, it's very cold..."

I finished the pee, my bladder was really full. I showered and put on a cotton pants. Andréia arrived and prepared the coffee. I showed her the pants. There was a spot of liquid. I was drinking coffee and looking at the spot each 10 minutes, and this only increased...

 

"Hemmerson, I have a severe urinary incontinence." - I sent him a phone message. "But Andréia is already here and she is finishing washing Esther’s clothes."

Immediately the phone rang: "Why do you like playing with serious issues? I never know if you're telling the truth...What is happening? "- Hemmerson had understood the message...

"Honey... Have you took breakfast? "- Arthur came into the room. "Uh-huh... Look..."- I showed him the wet spot on my pants, which then was pretty big..."

"The amnionitic sac ruptured?" - He held me tight. He knew that now the departure of our little girl could be very close, and we were facing the uncontrollable.

"Hemmerson is coming..." – I said.

 

The amniotic sac had ruptured. Hemmerson had lunch with us. We called our parents, who live at 960 and 1400 km apart from us, so that they could come.

"Hemmerson, you can go away, I’m coming to the hospital to check how’s Monica and I will have my nails done. I can not hold my daughter with my nails as they are." He smiled... "Do not take too long to call me, okay?"

Monica was beaming. Henrique was a cute baby who weighted 3700g and who was breastfed all the time. Arthur went with me to the delivery room, we catch our inflatable bathtub and gone down  the six floors of the hospital hand in hand.

"Nivea? It’s Quésia! Does Naiara can do my nails at home? I'm having some contractions... "

Naiara went to my home and I started feeling like it wouldn't take long to the labor to get started… "My nail varnish will be Renda mixed with Paris..." - I relaxed on my couch listening to Naiara's stories, my manicure. It was one of my favorite moments of the week...

Esther was moving and moving...

 

 

But the labor only hitched by night. I knew it would be like this. "It's when your brain shuts off..." - Hemmerson used to say.

I showered with the lights off. I always do this when I need concentration and relaxation, or when I was in a migraine attack. Arthur were there with me and started to massage me.

"Honey, this bathroom is very small. When Isabel arrives we all won’t  fit in here. In the new house we will make a shower box that fits doula, ok?"

We smiled and hugged, while the contractions were getting stronger.

Isabel arrived and we started walking through the house, with the low lights. We left just indirect lights and abajours.

I felt like I was in active phase of labor and asked Arthur to call Hemmerson, who advised: "Quésia, I think it's a good moment to go. Your contractions are very intense and we’ll have tranquility for you to adapt to another environment ".

5 cmdilated. Hemmerson went before us to prepare our hospitalization. Sálua was on the duty, a providential help to my reception be perfect.

Arthur stopped the car at the elevator door. I got down on the sixth floor and met the nurse Ana Paula. An angel who opened the suite's doors for us.

 

The lights remained off and Soraia was already there. The atmosphere remained peaceful and silent, just like in my house. Esther was still moving, which gave me strength and joy.

"Isabel, you can fill the bathtub, it's getting difficult to me..." Arthur continued with me in the room while Isabel and Soraia were filling  the bathtub.

The bathroom was perfect. Warm, with my candles everywhere. Be in the warm water was extremely pleasant.

It  was just me and Arthur inside the tub. We sang praises to the Lord, cried and smiled. I was very happy to be in labor, I was very afraid of having to induce the birth of my little daughter, at 42 weeks.

But I was also sad and confused with the possibility of the end. I knew that with the amniotic sac ruptured the chances of the baby be  born alive were lower. And I also knew that the chances of complications were higher in the delivery, at the birth of babies like Esther.

At some point these fears passed strongly for my feelings, and I put my fingers in the birth canal. Baby's presentation was high, and I could not perceive what was presented.

“Quésia, get real! This will be a dystocic delivery! It will hurt a lot! You don’t need suffering, the expulsion will take long..." I thought so...

I left the bath determined: "Hemmerson, call Niwton."

 

8 cm. It did not matter for me. Everything was very good, very quiet up here. I did not want to be uncomfortable in my baby's arrival, who was still moving a lot. And the pain was getting me depressed.

Niwton was fantastic. He spent an peridural catheter in the shadows, in a pregnant woman who screamed and moved herself without stopping. But I knew he was that good. Therefore was there.

I surrendered to the exhaustion and fell asleep. I think everyone did the same. And they were woken up by my pain cries when the effect of the anesthetic dose had passed...

 

"10 cm, Quésia, and still there is a amniotic sac..." - Hemmerson had told me from the beginning that it was a small tear, but only at that moment I could realize the blessing the Lord had given me: my daughter was still moving, the amniotic sac was intact and only the expulsion was missing! "Thank you, Lord, for the delicacy of Hemmerson’s fingers and the resistance of this part of the sac that protects the little head of Esther" - I prayed in my heart.

It seemed that there was no more effect of the analgesia. I felt a severe pain at a specific point of the pelvis and yelled a lot at the expulsive phase. Yelling helped me overcome the fear. The fear of life, of encountering Esther, of encountering the reality of her illness, the fear of death...

She came in face presentation. I thank Lord for this. The amniotic sac ruptured only at the end of the expulsive, which was quick, according to them. For me it was an eternity...

They did everything exactly as in our birth plan. Everything was exactly as me and Arthur dreamed and asked the Lord during pregnancy. When Esther came out, Soraia dried her, placed a hood and handed me my beautiful baby girl.

She was alive! Sneezed a few times and held my finger tightly. I checked the umblilical cord which was throbbing at more than 100 beats. She was not bradycardic and my fear was reducing.

I told my family to enter. They were all beautiful and well dressed, some smiling, some crying. Everyone carried one “big eyes animal”, a collection of plush toys to symbolize that Esther was a different baby and also part of a collection of different people, but very special. I said they could photograph her, that she was alive.

In some minutes I felt the placenta going out. So Hemmerson asked people to leave, only my mother and my sister would stay.

"Arthur, do you want to cut the cord?" - Someone asked. I held the cord, it no longer pulsed. And she was still clutching my finger, she was still there.

"You can cut honey, it has stopped throbbing." – I said to him.

Arthur cut... And she gone.

Esther went for eternity at the same moment Arthur cut the cord. It was the worst moment of our lives. 

At that moment she let go my finger. And I cried aloud. It was the worst pain I had felt in the last hours.

We all cried in that delivery room. We lost our daughter, we lost our Esther. 

It was so fast! So intense! So wonderful!

Soraia put his mini-stethoscope on the Esther´s chest and confirmed: "She is no longer alive, she is gone." She said it was 40 minutes of life. But for me it was 40 seconds. What I did in those 40 minutes, my God? Where was I?

I remember that when my brothers entered the suite I lifted her and showed her entire body to them, and soon put  her back on my skin, to don't lose heat.

I remember Arthur crying and kissing her. I remember his smiles every time she sneezed. And of hearing him say several times: "She's beautiful, my love! She's perfect! "

We stayed there yet some time in silence, enjoying every part of her little body. Our family went back and prayed together, holding hands, giving Esther the Lord.

“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” - Arthur whispered the text of Job 1:21b in my ears.

So I remembered the day April 2nd, when we learned that our little daughter was not really ours. We would have to return her to the Creator soon. And He told us clearly the text of His Word while we looked at the picture on the ultrasound.

I closed my eyes and thanked the Lord for everything. Thanked for a wonderful birth. For the Mater Dei Hospital, for the delivery suite, for the humanized team who attended and respected us, for the Núcleo Bem Nascer...

 

We also thank everyone who helped turn our mourning into joy:

- Hemmerson Magioni, our obstetrician, who celebrated every moment of Esther's life before and after diagnosis.

- Julio Couto, our sonographer, who continued on our side, being a doctor even without therapeutic possibility for our unborn child.

- Soraya Nogueira, our pediatrician, who welcomed us and took care of our daughter as if she were her patient for many years...

- Niwton Toledo, our anesthesiologist, who was on duty outside the suite, waiting for the possibility  to be invited to participate in our history.

- Isabel Cristina, our doula who, with her hands, could lessen our pain and our fear.

- Jane and Oswaldo Marra, our photographers, who wept and prayed with us, working with love and professionalism to the story of Esther become eternal.

- Sandro Chaves and Márcia Salvador, managers of Hospital Mater Dei, which fondly received our birth plan and opened the doors of the hospital to our family, allowing that the birth and death of Esther were treated with respect and dignity.

- Our dear family: parents, brothers, sisters-cousins, uncles... who lived with us every moment, happy and sad ones, of Esther’s history.

Quésia Tamara Mirante Ferreira Villamil

Mother of Esther, 29/06/2011, 40 minutes on earth, forever in our hearts.

 

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