I stored jars of breastmilk in the fridge, next to the coffee cream. A little mammalian humour. The room between our dining and living rooms became my lactation room. The Lac Shack. It?s where, every three hours, my gaze shifted between the clock and the withering houseplants during impeccably timed dates with my Medela Lactina Select.
I expected my twins to arrive early. Considering I was 37 years old and barely top five feet, my pregnancy was considered high-risk. But labour at 28 weeks was like a sucker punch. I had just entered my third trimester, the really fat stage when people give you seats on the bus and you sleep upright on account of the heartburn. I remember only surreal bits in the operating room?how, after twin A was delivered, the doctors wheeled over the ultrasound to take a gander at twin B. I saw a large, distorted hand come in and out of focus on the grainy screen. Well, I thought, that explains the early labour?my baby has a giant hand. No, I realized once the pain became excruciating, that was the doctor?s hand. An hour of pushing, a couple dozen contractions, and it was all over. I was the mother of two tiny pink girls, each weighing the equivalent of a couple cans of soup. I remember standing woozily by their incubators, high on codeine, wondering why, when they opened their mouths, no sound came out. Breathing tubes had rendered them tiny mimes.
Of the 328,802 babies born alive in Canada in 2002, fewer than one percent were born as early as mine. The...