Holoprosencephaly

I had a twelve-fingered baby tonight.
And an alien-headed one.
Not bad for a Thursday.

There's awful hush in those rooms.
The ones where everyone knows what's going to happen,
But no-one has the words to say.
There's some fear that if you say it, then it will definitely come true. Or someone will come unglued.
Really, what do you say?
"So... Your baby's gonna die, huh? That must suck."
"So... Are you having a boy or a girl? What's her name? What theme did you pick out for the baby's room? Did you get a lot of pink... Oh yeah. Your baby isn't going to need clothes."
"So... How 'bout those Mariners?"

There's no talk of birth or death. It all happens in airy euphemisms like a funeral home. It's "when the baby comes" and "it" and "when the baby passes" (gas?)
"demise"
"the falling leaf card"
"your loss"

Not "when your baby is born" or "when your baby dies". There's a sort of finality to it, when you say it that way, I guess. A terminability that we aren't used to in labor and delivery. Birth, born, all these have connotations of warmth and joy of new life, and when everyone already knows that that little life will be fleeting, it really spoils the fun.

We reassured the mother. Like some women, part of her was horrified by the thought of holding her strange son, not knowing whether he would cry, or move, or breathe. Perhaps the images she had conjured up of his blank, staring eyes was enough to make her turn him away. The pain of knowing he was dying was made even sharper by feeling his warm, living flesh.
We reassured her, that if she didn't want to hold him, couldn't bear to watch him die, that we would carry him; that he wouldn't be lonely.
He wouldn't die alone.

We stood outside and patted eachother on the back. "I hate it when they breathe."
"I hate it when they cry."
"Yeah, that gasping is the worst."
We try hard to pretend there's a speck in our eyes, as two very pregnant women waddle expectantly around the corner.
Labor and Delivery is supposed to be a happy place. Crying nurses make healthy women nervous.

We have such a unique job of every day welcoming a new soul into the world; watching a new family fold around a sweet little life with a big future. When we are faced with a dying baby, it's a hard gear to shift. I had welcomed a newborn, red and screaming, into the light only an hour before. And now to hush my voice and try to think of ways to be helpful, but not trip over my labor & delivery patter.
"So... How did you get his name?"
"So... Are your other little ones excited?"
"So... How does it feel to be saying goodbye to your only child, when you only just said 'Hello'?"

No-one has the words, everything you say seems like a mockery of the situation.
I am sorry. I am so sorry.

My new twelve-fingered friend down the hall howls at his mother's breast. He clutches and unclutches the extra tiny finger hanging from each of his pink pinkies, and yawns toward his smiling parent. With all the things that can go wrong in our development from oocyte to "ooh! She's cute!", the miracle is that we get it right so often.