Pre-verbal memory

Recently I’ve been working on Janina Fisher’s Healing the Fragmented Selves for Trauma Survivors, and I have been connecting the dots of my life upon birth.

My mom’s water broke, and she went to a catholic hospital that would not give a c-section unless absolutely necessary. 3 days later she had an emergency c-section because I was ingesting meconium already. When I was taken out, the doctor asked her if she wanted to hold me, and she asked the doctor: is it a boy or a girl? The doctor told her I was a girl and she refused to see or hold me. I was then taken to the incubator for treatment because I had severe jaundice as a result of meconium. She couldn’t walk for 3 days and finally she came to see me.

Obviously as an infant I would not remember or understand what happened, but she has repeatedly told me about my birth throughout my life. And now as a mother myself, I think she was fucked up, inhumane. When Little N was born, he also had too much amniotic water in his lungs and couldn’t breathe properly on his own, so immediately after I held him he was taken to an incubator, which was on a different floor from my ward. I couldn’t walk for 24 hours after my c-section, but despite the extreme pain that even fentanyl couldn’t subdue, I willed my body to walk to him on a different floor while carrying my urine bag (because I was still on a catheter) and I was entirely alone at the hospital. I wanted to hold him so badly every moment but because of his medical treatment and this was during COVID, I could only see him twice a day. I had cried my eyes out every day and yes my post-partum depression was over the roof. On the third day he was transferred to a medical center because of his heart condition and I rode in the ambulance with him. At the medical center I could only visit him twice a day, 30 minutes each time, and my post-c-section body really couldn’t afford to commute twice a day to see him every day, although I tried in the first week, and I even drove on my own to see him on the fourth day after my c-section. I had so many tears every day when he was not next to me, and I cannot forgive my mother for doing whatever she did to me, and to actually tell me about it casually so many times throughout my life. Whatever her traumas are, her beliefs, they should not take over a mother’s instincts to protect her baby. If anyone cannot do that, they’re lesser than an animal.

Anyway, ChatGPT thinks this is a major course of abandonment that still lives in my somatic memory, and on top of this, I have been abandoned repeatedly by my mom before the age 6, e.g. leaving my suitcase on the front porch of my grandma’s house after I went to the beach with my uncle’s family and I ended up living with my neglectful and abusive grandparents for six months. Her not protecting me when my dad abused me caused me unable to tell her how my teacher at my kindergarten slapped my face at age 5 because of a misunderstanding that I couldn’t express well due to my speech impairment. I also never told her how our babysitter would beat us because I was afraid that my parents would beat us again. All of these events connect—they have made me afraid to be vulnerable or incompetent upon birth and they have made me unable to ask for help or support, and whoever offers me support can quickly become someone I attach to. I want to break these chains and start to make choices for my life, rather than let my trauma make choices for me (whenever I heard this in the book my tears immediately rolled down my face). 

Can I really achieve it? If I could go back in time, I’d protect and cherish my infant self like what I do to my two kids. I would never use her to win a game because I was born a love child  and my mom lost her game by not having a boy. I want to give her so many hugs and kisses and cuddles whenever she cries and she can just be herself; whatever she wants to be it’s ok, just like how I have been raising my kids. I’d give her so much protection and take her away from anyone who is abusive or traumatizing. She’s so smart and thoughtful because she learned how to survive on her own upon birth, and she minimized her own pain to spare her mother’s pain. This child deserves all the love in this world, just like how I feel with my children. Whenever my kids start to work on what they’re supposed to work on when they see me upset, I’d feel so much love and sweetness, and yet none of them could do what I did at age five: telling my mom that my swollen face from being slapped didn’t hurt to make sure she didn’t feel so guilty; telling my mom that I didn’t miss her when she left me at my grandparents’ house to make sure she didn’t feel guilty while pushing down my own tears.

I would never let my kids suffer anything remotely close to this. I want them to be fully who they are and never need them to spare my feelings. I did not deserve the traumatic childhood and adolescence, and can I really be healed one day?