Tangled Up in Turmoil: A Mother’s Reckoning with Guilt and Illness

Buckle up, this one is raw.

Picture this: you’re in the hospital with your baby, scared and confused. Doctors and nurses are asking questions, running tests. Half of the questions seem to be about you; your pregnancy, your delivery, your lifestyle. You’re left wondering if something you did caused this. If you missed something. If there’s something in you that passed to your baby like a curse.

Many parents wrestle with this guilt. The answer is usually no. Nature and the human body are remarkably resilient. Most babies arrive with ten fingers, ten toes, and a healthy future.

But still, the questions linger.

My pregnancy wasn’t planned. And I’m addicted to running. I ran about 5 miles a day up until two weeks before Owen was born, even after partially tearing my bladder. When my water broke, I called labor and delivery to ask if I could go on the elliptical while waiting to come in. Strange, disordered thoughts, in hindsight… but I was trying to manage time, curiosity, and looming confinement. 

At five months pregnant, I got COVID. I wasn’t terribly ill, but I was definitely hit hard. Because of this, I had another anatomy scan at 33 weeks. At 20 weeks, Owen had looked healthy (a bit big headed). At 33 weeks, his head was still large, but now he had a severely enlarged left kidney. It was deemed an incidental finding which is fairly common, especially  in baby boys. Nothing urgent.

Still, I thought about everything: the runs, the Stevia in my coffee, the occasional 2nd cup of coffee, the fender bender in the 1st trimester, the flea meds for the pets, the 34-mile hike I took with my doctor’s blessing, the cold cuts I craved (and a few times caved), the hours in urgent careworking as a single coverage provider for busy, 10+ hour shifts.

When my labor began, about 2 weeks before my due date (Earth Day), I was still on prophylactic antibiotics for the bladder injury. I labored at home for the better part of a day, then went to the hospital where I was ultimately induced. I was induced with Pitocin, confining me to bed and intensifying the contractions. Owen’s heart rate dropped on several occasions, but would quickly bounce back when I repositioned, pitocyn was slowed and was given terbutaline on a few occasions. As a first time mom, I had no birth plan, but I hoped to be active during the process and to avoid an epidural and a C-section, of course.

After 30 hours of labor and one dose of morphine that dangerously lowered Owen’s heart rate, I asked for an epidural. It only worked on one side. I received two more with the same result. I could have hopped on my left leg to the bathroom. I began to feel like I was here for an episode of the Twilight Zone and not the birth of my baby. The nurse anesthetist tripped over the monitors, detaching Owen’s leads. When re-applied, his heart rate had dropped. Again. Pitocin was stopped. Again.

Eventually, at about 40 hours of labor I was told I could push and I did. I felt like an annoyance to the staff, why couldn’t I just have the baby already? No attending physician appeared until 46 hours in, when my OB walked in and said, “We’ve tried long enough. Time for a C-section.” No one had ever asked or explained. It just hadn’t been on the table until it was.

In the OR, I overheard the anesthesiologist arguing with the OB. The OB assumed my epidural worked. It didn’t. The anesthesiologist said I needed general anesthesia. I was poked with a scalpel and whimpered, “yes” when asked if I felt it. Terror. Then a mask. A countdown. Darkness.

I woke in a recovery room next to a baby. I wasn’t sure if he was mine. I didn’t know what time it was or if he was healthy. Not witnessing Owen’s birth was a small horror I tucked away. 

The following morning, a team of doctors surrounded him, pointing out facial asymmetry, single palmar creases, webbed fingers. Before I could ask anything, he was whisked away for a kidney ultrasound.

And the spiral began: What is wrong? What did I do? What did I eat or what didn’t I eat? What did I drink? Was it the Prozac I took before I knew I was pregnant? The stress hormones after I quit cold turkey? Running? The cold cuts? Should I have demanded a c-section before it was offered? What was it?

They kept asking about my health, my pregnancy. I kept asking myself if I had failed him somehow.

Since Owen’s diagnosis 10 months later, I’ve been told it wasn’t anything I did. It’s “probably genetic”, the vague explanation given to many parents of children with cryptogenic infantile spasms.

And yet. As we still search for answers about why Owen developed West Syndrome, the guilt lingers. Even knowing it wasn’t my fault, there’s still that tangle of questions and self-blame. Because the person I love most in this world faces a diagnosis that I couldn’t prevent. And if there were even the slightest chance I caused it… how could I live with that?

I know I’m not alone. We are not alone. I know we didn’t cause our children’s conditions. But this is a mother’s reckoning with guilt and illness.