Laura Brin

Moms Like Me Presenter 2024

My father’s death and my son’s birth both happened in ways sudden and unexpected, just a few years apart from each other. 

My son was born in the darkest days of covid, in the coldest nights of winter, suddenly cut from my body and taken from me. 

It was the time of year when the rivers in Montana just start to freeze. The water becomes thick, flowing down river in slow motion.

Nearing the end of 34 weeks of pregnancy, I went to bed as usual, around 10pm on a Monday in December. When liquid started gushing out of me, I stood up in a panic, heart pounding, breath quickening. I knew something was deeply wrong.  

As they wheeled me into the operating room just three hours later, I remember thinking…surely they’ll turn down those bright lights …surely all of these people and machines aren’t here for just me. I frantically asked… please don’t shave all my pubic hair? I pleaded….can I just have one sip of water for my raw throat? 

It didn’t take long for them to pull him out of me, holding my baby up over the blue curtain – too soon, too small, too quiet. Is he breathing? Can I hold him? 

He was transferred directly to the NICU, immediately connected to the breathing tubes and monitoring cords that would be attached to him for months. One of the nurses put her hands on my husband, reminded him to breathe, and suggested he go with them. I was left alone as the doctors put me back together on the other side of the curtain. The anesthesiologist gave me his cold, gloved hand to hold.

The two hours after that felt like a blurry eternity but I eventually got to touch the human life that my body created. My son, Forest, curled up on my chest like a frog. 

Larry took pictures, and we excitedly called our closest friends and family the next morning. Dad was first on my call list. “Honey, is everything ok?” he asked groggily into the phone. “What’s his name? Forest? I love that name, that’s fabulous!”

At this moment I thought the worst was over, that the trauma of birth was done. But, truly, the worst was yet to come. 

For 33 days, Forest stayed in the NICU, tethered to his tiny bed.

Loving nurses and kind doctors kept him fed, breathing, and it felt – kept him from me. 

After the first few days in the hospital, it was time for me to go home ... alone. This was, at the time, the worst day of my life. For the previous 8 months we had been the same body – two beings in one, and now he was being taken away from me. I thought I could still feel him in my womb.

That night I called my sister, sobbing uncontrollably on hands and knees in my closet. Hormones and painkillers pumped through me as I cried and drooled in the pain of feeling like I had lost my Forest.  

Had I lost him? Was he still alive if he wasn’t with me? I worried that he would roll out of his bed and fall on the white linoleum floor. I feared he would stop breathing and no one would notice. I called the night nurse in panicked tears to see if he was ok, and get an update on his vitals.

The river behind our house would soon turn slushy, with chunks of ice starting to form, collect, and collide.

After that first night, we fell into a miserable and solitary routine of going to and from the hospital, a fortress of sorts. No one could come with us, and we could only leave once a day. Each morning, as we walked through door 8, security guards took our temperatures and put stickers on our coats, indicating we were safe to enter. One of the guards began to recognize us – he asked about Forest and I recommended my favorite western literature. 

We spent long days within those white walls. Watching the monitors, counting the ounces of milk, hoping for a speedy exit from that wretched box. Dad and I talked or texted most days, and I’d give him the report of how my tummy was feeling, as he put it, and how Forest was progressing.

Our friends cooked warm soups and assembled healthy salads so we didn’t have to worry about feeding ourselves. Our family came to Bozeman to visit and spend time with us in the evenings. 

But even with our support network loving us from afar, we were all alone.

When I look at pictures from that time, I look … fine. I see images of me smiling while snuggling Forest. Photos of Larry and me as proud new parents lounging in hospital chairs. Screen shots of facetiming dad, now Papa, so he could meet his grandson. 

But inside, my mind was churning, like the chunks of river ice as they smash into the bank.

During those days sitting in the NICU I started to fantasize about stealing Forest from the hospital, taking note of which doors locked after hours.

I considered lying about how much milk he was drinking to make him seem further along. 

“I’m not convinced he still needs to be there,” I told my sister early on. It felt like me vs. them, like I was a wild animal separated from her cub or calf. 

I now recognize the care Forest and I received was necessary. And I wonder what would have happened to us without it. But at the time, I was terrified, recovering from surgery, and distrusting of the medical staff. 

I felt my baby was being held against my will. 

But then, finally, on day 34, we got to go home. Though still attached to an oxygen tank, Forest left the hospital and breathed fresh air for the first time. 

But being home meant that my partner went back to work. And being the winter before vaccines, with a preemie on oxygen, meant that I was deeply alone. Alone with Forest all day for days at a time. 

I tried to stay connected to the world.

A couple of friends came by for a quick masked visit and family came for a week here and there. My sister, always my advocate, scheduled postpartum doulas and lactation specialists to come and check on me.

I faithfully attended my therapy and psychiatry appointments through the screen. 

My father was the first person to meet Forest outside of his medical providers those first few months. 

Dad drove up from Denver, busting into the house with pure excitement to meet his grandson. “Should we do skin-to-skin? I’ve heard that it really helps with bonding!” As dad immediately peeled off his shirt and lovingly held my son to his chest, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, that’s not exactly what skin to skin means.

But the time in-between those precious human connection points was brutal. I felt frozen in time. 

Sometime in late February there was a break in the cold, which thawed the river ice, but just enough to wreak havoc. An Ice jam, which usually occur further down river, formed closer to home, and caused the freezing water to flood. 

During those days, I was mostly stuck on the couch. My belly was still healing and Forest was still on oxygen, so it was logistically challenging to move around the house. Anxious thoughts pierced my mind, and at times I wasn’t even able to carry Forest across the room for fear I would drop him. Covid was rampant so there was nowhere to go anyway. 

One morning, the icy river water started to creep over our property.

It was around that time that I actually thought about giving up. I visualized my body flowing in the ice-cold water of a half frozen river, my hair floating as it does in the bath. 

The water is coming anyway, I thought. Forest will be fine without me.  

Even as I was having these terrifying thoughts, I knew it was not normal. I didn’t quite know what to do, so I just started reaching out. I called dad for comfort. I asked Larry to come home early that day. I told my sister about the scary thoughts, and texted my therapist that I needed a check in right away.  

Eventually the river water receded. And eventually my mind and body healed. But it took time. A lot of time. 

By the time Forest was two we were all sleeping well, my body finally felt strong, and I was finding myself again. A few years in, our family had found a happy rhythm. 

On a Saturday last June, the three of us went camping in the Tobacco Root mountains. We parked our truck and camper by an alpine lake and Forest caught brook trout with the Cars themed fishing rod we picked up on the way – both excited and scared when the fish flopped out of the water.

That night as we slept in the cold mountain air, my father died of a heart attack out of nowhere.  

When we got back into service, I had a text from my sister that said “call me, emergency.” She answered the phone in tears and told me what happened. My body went numb. My legs lost their strength. 

This then became the worst day of my life. 

Just as surely as the river freezes and thaws each year, human life begins and ends.

At dad’s service the rabbi explained Mourner’s Kaddish – the Jewish prayer remembering the dead – this way: That we, the living, stand in the middle of the grand canyon, the expanse of space and time surrounding us. At one rim rests our ancestors -and all who have come before us. At the other are our children and our children’s children. We stand in between past and future generations, always a part of both. 

Today, I find myself parentless as I learn how to parent. Most of the time, I feel unmoored. Wondering if I’m even doing this right. I no longer have my father as my compass, to help me navigate daily life as a mom. 

The only thing I can think of to do is to just be like Papa. So …

… I’ll take Forest’s picture on every first day of school, just like dad did –, pointing the camera lens as close to my face as possible for a “close up shot.” – and we’ll go out to a nice lunch to celebrate the end of the school year too. 

… We’ll ski together and I’ll say yes to every request for a hot chocolate break. I’ll push him to hike to the very top of the mountain, then we’ll take a high alpine nap on the blanket I packed. 

… I’ll display the pottery he makes in adolescence for decades to come.  

…I’ll drop him off at college, and make a point to become friends with his spouse. 

…I’ll do what I can to not only show Forest the world, but to make him feel confident and content moving through it. 

… And when Forest asks me if I miss Papa and why did Papa die and is papa eating lunch at his house, I’ll say that Papa may be gone but we will always, always remember him.