INTO LIFE: A FETUS’ PERCEPTION ON THE ACCORD OF BIRTH

Doctors told me I was born at 22 weeks gestation with a 50 percent viability. I wasn’t given a choice to live, yet I pushed for my survival out of necessity and perseverance. And I fought hard. “She fought like hell!” a nurse kindly described me to my mother at the OB alert voiced at my birth hospital. And that’s exactly what I did. I defied all the odds despite what the world supplanted before me. Today, my caregivers refer to me as a “miracle baby”.

I was procreated from the union of a man and a woman, entities God designated and assigned as my parents. Agreeably, I started as a group of cells and at merely 6 weeks, I had a beating heart. As I rested in the vastness of my amniotic fluid, I had begun to ponder for who and by whom I was created. Angels in my womb conscripted me to a numinous role for I was created out of love and into love. Still, all of this didn’t make any sense. Today’s culture of death, perpetually rescinded my life to a chemical combustion of bonds coming together out of thin air, a mere chance in the vastness of the universe, attached to a controversial political slogan tagged as “My body, my choice.” Even now, scientists and politicians gossiped and labeled me “a clump of cells” or simply “a fetus and not human”. Even though I was given a purpose, everything about my birth was traumatic.

The moment my amniotic sac burst, the walls around my common home raged and quaked around me. The fluids in my lungs suffocated me forcing me to take my first breaths. The constant violent pushing out my mother’s womb cultivated a louder and colder world, a world I had not seen nor experienced. The squeezing pain tinged my senses with noise and agitation. “Where was my body and my choice in all of this?”, I waited in the midst of this ordeal for someone to advocate for my healing and comfort. I did what I knew best. I cried and yelled, piercing and pleading for someone to acknowledge me, to hold and nourish me back to life. Had someone not noticed my frailty and my necessity for an embrace? Angels often ask me what jostled me through the obstacles of birth, uplifting me in moments of darkness.

The beauty of my mother best answers their inquiry. My mother’s beauty and scent transported me to a different world. She made me feel safe and sound synchronously. When the cacophonous world interrupted my silent sleep, my mother’s affability, touch, and gemütlichkeit calmed everything about me. Her nurturing and maternal presence made my journey worthwhile. And, when my splendor had exhausted everything about my mother’s affection, my father’s embrace seemed to ignite my gaze and complexion. The world was silent and beautiful when he looked at me. My father’s protection became for me Heaven’s greatest ovation. What my mother lacked in strength, my father apprised in gentleness. My parents’ presence created a foundation which motivated and adhered me to the milestones my neonatologist intended.

From birth, I was given respiratory support in the NICU and my lung compliance progressed adequately. While I became the center of attention in my parents’ lives, I perceived in their eyes an incomprehensible sadness. The sound of my mother’s lullaby one night capitulated the joy emanating from my birth:

"Sweet Sofia, fount of wisdom. We will miss you and not forget you. You were perfect, well-deserving of our love and our affection. Rest for now, little princess, Mommy and Daddy will soon come get you. Kiss now Jesus, little peanut, fly to Him for in death He’ll raise you."

I learned my twin sister had not survived the trauma of our birth. Sofia had been born still and not been able to tolerate the challenges of extra-uterine life. Sofia’s life served a purpose, however. Her blood transfused into mine, boosting my body to battle the obstacles outside of the womb. And in my delicate newborn body, I Victoria, whispered a soft song to my twin angel:

“From wisdom into victory, from death into life, greatest is the inquiry that united your soul to mine. Sisters are forever. Rest your soul in mine. My life is about you and yours, now Divine.”

"Thou knowest, O my God, that it is neither from ambition nor the love of glory that I make war on the enemies of Thy name, but in order to strike terror into those that blaspheme it."

-St. Ferdinand III of Castile