Finding Leah - February 25th, 2006

Eight months pregnant I sat on a toilet and pee’d. I noticed some blood so I called my gyncologist’s office. He was out of town, wouldn’t return for three weeks, and sorry, had arranged for no substitute.

Four days later I lay on a bed in Fate Bene Fratelli’s highly acclaimed maternity ward.
Rome’s beautiful public hospital rests on a small island in the heart of ‘The Eternal City’.
My father-in-law Ottavio, surprised me stopping by during visiting hours.
“ I saw the baby! She’s beautiful! And Michela, such a beautiful name!”
“ Michela? Who is Michela?” I asked.

My first and only child had been born under near death emergency procedures.
She was fine, I was told, but I’d not been granted permission to visit her. The hospital had decided to keep her under observation in the pediatrics ward and no arrangements for patients’ passage between the two separate wards, maternity and pediatrics, existed in the fine Roman hospital.

Not being permitted to visit, smell, hold, see, or touch my newborn child those first four post partum days was undoubtedly traumatic for me. I’d been assigned to a room shared with 3 other cesarian recovering mothers, but THEIR babies were brought to them for feeding once every three hours. Daily, my envy and emotional pain grew.

I’d apparently given birth, my belly was somewhat deflated, but I’d never met my child.
No one ever asked me what I’d wanted to name the baby.
Later I learned that a doctor HAD asked my husband what to name the baby, but that my husband had responded that he didn’t know yet what to name her because we’d agreed to decide her name once we’d seen her.

Michela….Michela?...
I arranged to have an appointment with the overseeing Doctor of the pediatric ward. He was more than 45 minutes late for the appointment so I told my hospital mates to refer him to the lovely wood and glass hospital chapel where I’d be waiting for him.

Silently I stared at a Madonna statue, perplexed.
When the good doctor finally appeared I asked him, ( in Italian) “ How did you dare to name my child?”

“IS she MY child?” I asked. “I haven’t been allowed to see her , let alone touch her, for four ‘fotutti’ days. My husband and I had agreed to name her togethor, but now I’ve learned that we can’t, because you decided to name her instead.”

Doc., sensing a bit my hurt and anguish, attempted to reassure me with,
“ It’s not the name that makes the child but the child that makes the name.”
He then told me that I could visit her in the pediatric ward once I was detached from the I.V. and catheter the hospital staff required of me.
That afternoon I hid my catheter bag in my bedcoat pocket and struggled to walk to the pediatric ward.
The crib with her hospital card was empty. There was no baby named Michela under any lamps or within any incubators. I asked a nurse to help me. She didn’t know where my child had gone.
After a desperate time of asking and checking bracelets we located her in another baby’s crib, with another baby’s clothes, and another baby’s hospital card.
My baby, at last.
Embracing her, I understood why the hospital staff had separated us for so many days, she was as sweet as sweet can be and deserved a name as beautiful as Michela.
To let everyone know who her mother is, I dressed her in a solid bright red sweater and put her back into her assigned crib after she’d fallen asleep in my arms.
Dressed in red she might be easier to find the next time I visited.