Week 2 - Luzon - Keel-Hauling

[alycewilson]

This is my entry for LJ Idol - Survivor, with the topic "Keel-hauling."

Keel-Hauling

Tethered by my umbilical
I scrambled topside,
mouth opening to suck in
amniotic deluge, viscid
meconium, as forceps
pulled my bulbous head.
I burst to the surface,
too weak to cry. A bulb syringe
drained my brackish lungs,
and I gasped, mewling
for comfort. Was lifted into the arms

of an incubator, white noise
suffocating sound. An ocean
away, my mother grieved
the normalcy they said I'd never
see. My future
stifled by my striving for sun,
my early days plunged
into uncertainty. Every crawl
forward, word uttered, step
taken, my mother celebrated
her miraculous daughter, reborn from salt.

Comments

[halfshellvenus]

Goodness, is this the story of your own birth? I hadn't thought about the dangers of breathing in meconium for a long time. A bulb syringe hardly seems sufficient-- you would want to bathe the lungs if you could, but I don't know how that would be possible.

And especially in an earlier era, the risk of infection and pneumonia afterward... I can see why it would be such a worry, for SO LONG, whether it might have drastic long-term consequences.

I loved "lifted into the arms of an incubator" and "reborn from salt" here. You were indeed a miracle!