First Birthday

A wicker basinet is pictured with white linens and blue green knit baby clothes hanging over the side against a white background.

By. Jennifer Furner

For an August afternoon, it isn’t really that hot. Balloons bop back and forth in the steady cool breeze that blows across the backyard. Amelia, wearing a one-piece watermelon swimsuit and a sunhat, sits in a few inches of water in her inflatable pool, splashing happily. My brother crouches next to his niece on the grass, capturing each adorable moment with his camera. Her grandfathers sit under the tent on the deck, drinking cool beer out of sweating glass bottles, laughing and talking. My mother refills empty bowls with ruffled chips and carrot sticks.

This is Amelia’s first birthday party, but it’s not her birthday.

I sit in a foldable chair off to the side, watching it all. My navy-blue maxi dress stretches as I cross one leg over the other. I feel the inside of the fabric catch on my fresh surgical scar, and I instantly and instinctively pull the dress away from my skin. I peer down inside the collar to my bare skin. My incision is still sealed shut.

My right hand moves to my stomach and rests there as if to say, it’s all right, I’m here for you, like it used to do when my body was growing a baby. Now I am healing not from the c-section surgery which brought Amelia into the world, but from the abdominal surgery that removed my appendix, an ovary, and a cancerous tumor.

Chris sees me flinch and comes to my side, bending over so he can whisper in my ear and not draw attention. “Feeling alright?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” I assure him. “It’s about time to eat, though. We should get her out of the pool.”

“I’ll do it,” he says, and walks away, grabbing a towel off the deck railing. A moment later, she’s bundled in his arms as he opens the sliding door. I wave to her from my chair and blow her a kiss while she eyes me curiously, likely wondering why it’s not me who’s carrying her inside.

Since she was born, I have been her anchor, the constant presence keeping her steady in her new tumultuous world. She was so helpless and fragile, and I shouldered the responsibility to protect her and provide for her, no matter the personal sacrifices that were required. But that sense of duty eventually became its own anchor, weighing me down, drowning me. I focused on perfection, on doing the right thing all the time, giving Amelia everything and leaving myself nothing. I had assumed that if anything were to destroy me, it would be motherhood, not cancer.

My abdomen had started to bulge a few months ago. I examined myself sideways in the mirror as I had done during my pregnancy. Why do I keep gaining weight? Why does it keep accumulating in front? Is this what happens to your body after you have a kid? I took a pregnancy test every month to guarantee that it was fat and not fetus. I can’t do it again, I whispered to myself.

Eventually, I asked my doctor about all this weight gain and the digestion problems that seemed to result from it.

“Our metabolism slows down as we age,” she assured me, “and oftentimes adults can develop food allergies. That’s probably all it is.”

Maybe it had been my fault; maybe I hadn’t been eating the right things. I had been blaming myself all year for anything that didn’t seem right: Amelia’s eating and sleeping habits, her attachment to me, her lack of develop in one area or another. Why wouldn’t this be my fault, too?

Two days before Amelia’s birthday, I lifted her from her crib when she awoke from her afternoon nap and felt my abdominal muscles twinge. Hours later, I writhed on the bathroom floor, clenching, sweating, heaving, unsure what I suffered from but certain it was serious. “Take me to the hospital,” I pleaded with my husband.

“It’s probably just food poisoning,” he answered. “There’s nothing to do but wait it out.” I just had to endure.

It reminded me of pushing for four hours in labor without being any closer to meeting my daughter. I just had to endure then, too.

“Are we sure there’s a baby in there?” I had asked the obstetrician.

“Oh, there’s a baby in there, all right,” she said, “and we’ll get her out one way or another.”

After another hour of pushing had passed, it was determined I needed a c-section. All that agony when my labor could have been over hours earlier.

I thought of that as I laid on the bathroom floor. These were relentless contractions; my exhaustion eased me into sleep only to be awoken again immediately with stabbing cramps and another wave of nausea. I couldn’t breathe through it, though I had been no good at that in labor, either. I had waved the white flag seven hours in, begging for an epidural.

After an agitated night of minimal sleep, the pain persisted. Nothing I did seemed to ease my misery. Chris finally agreed to take me to an urgent care center.

I laid on the exam table, unable to sit upright. The nurse brought me some water with a straw, and I sipped motionless while Chris read books to Amelia on the only chair in the small room. A man came in, introduced himself, and shook my hand. He had me explain how I had felt and what all had happened over the last day.

“May I feel your abdomen?” he asked.

I rolled onto my back, and he kneaded my belly like delicate bread dough.

“I suggest you go to the hospital right now.”

“What do you think is wrong with me?” I said.

“I really don’t know. But your stomach is very rigid, and I think you should be looked at immediately.” He reached out his hand for a shake, and as I shook it, he lifted me to a sitting position.

Amelia drummed on the chairs and ate from her snack cup as the ER doctor did an ultrasound. The results came back an hour later inconclusive. I sent Chris and Amelia home while I waited for a CT scan. The results came back another hour later inconclusive.

There was a mass in there, all right, but they had no idea what it was. They admitted me for observation and more tests and finally gave me some long-awaited-epidural-like pain management. The muscles relaxed, the tension in my body bled out, and I drifted into sleep.

I laid in the same hospital, in an identical room, in a bed attached to machines by thick electrical cords and a needle embedded in my skin, just as I had a year ago when I gave birth.

The next day was Amelia’s first birthday; Chris bought and wrapped Amelia’s gifts, my mother-in-law decorated a cake, and they brought everything to the hospital. I felt a tinge of regret in my throat. I had no part in her birthday preparation whatsoever, and now we had to celebrate in a cold sterile room instead of our warm cheerful home.

Amelia unwrapped her presents on my bed, then sat in my lap and ate cake from my fork.

A doctor interrupted our impromptu party to tell me he was referring me to a gynecologic oncologist. A mass that large in my abdomen was likely cancerous.

A few days later, I was sprawled on a table under bright lights in a white room, my arms splayed to the side, my wrists bound. I was not conscious, like I was with my cesarean, but I imagine the process was about the same: a long cut with a scalpel, a tender reach inside my abdomen, a careful tug, and something my body created was removed.

It hadn’t spread. My oncologist was confident that I needed neither chemotherapy nor radiation.

“Is there anything I should change about my lifestyle to keep it from coming back?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Sometimes these things just happen. You can keep doing whatever you did before.”

I will never know exactly what caused my tumor to form, but something in the previous year had to have influenced it. The timing of the tumor was coincidental in that it started to grow after I had a child. After giving birth, I felt as though I, too, were a newborn, unsure how to navigate my new world, scared and overwhelmed by the responsibility before me. I was no longer myself; I was only “Mom.”

Maybe denying a portion of myself emotionally was enough to change me physically.

I didn’t want to keep doing what I did before.

Having a child is not unlike a cancer diagnosis—it is just as shocking, just as transforming, just as motivating for making better choices. When Amelia was born, I wanted to be a better person for her. Now with my mortality in the balance, I realized I also wanted to be a better person for myself.

Two weeks later, we are finally giving Amelia a proper party, the party she deserves. When Chris reemerges from the house with Amelia in his arms, her wet swimsuit has been swapped for a pink onesie. He settles her into her high chair. I use the deck rail to help me stand from my foldable chair, my recently severed abdominal muscles still rather useless, and I wrap a bib around her neck with colorful letters that spell out “Birthday Girl.” The crown I made rests precariously on her thin layer of blonde curls, as she suspiciously eyes the flickering flames on the cake I decorated. Her loved ones sing to her, and her father and I help her blow out her candles.

As she dips her fingers into the frosting, I make my way back to my chair. That small amount of standing and bending has exhausted me. I let out a sigh, and my hand finds its way back to my stomach; it’s difficult to imagine that just over a year ago, when my hand rested there, Amelia was under the skin, waiting. I marvel at how big she’s gotten, how she’s able to feed herself. She is resembling a person more and more every day, and I hang onto this precious moment where she isn’t a baby anymore but not yet a kid.

I am resembling a person more and more every day, too. I am not doing what I did before. I am taking time for myself, exploring my passions, trying to be comfortable with a little failure now and again.

Life is not perfect; why should I expect myself to be?

Amelia shoots her hands up to the sky to indicate she’s all done eating. Chris is talking to his mother nearby, forking his last cake bite into his mouth. I shout to him and point at Amelia. He tosses his paper plate in the trash as he makes his way to her high chair. He takes one of her raised hands and sticks it in his mouth, licking off the leftover frosting, and she cackles a belly laugh.

Chris sets her free among the party guests. But she comes right to my knees and opens her palms to me, telling me she wishes to be held. Doctor’s orders are that I can’t pick her up for another two weeks. But my daughter wants to be held, and I want to hold my daughter. I take a breath and pick her up. I wince at the pain as I lift her to my knees; a small price to pay to feel my daughter’s weight on my thighs, her wisps of hair tickling my nostrils.

I arrange her on my lap, resting my chin on her shoulder, and give her cheek a kiss. Instead of a birthday wish, I whisper a promise in her ear to take better care of both of us from now on.

 Jennifer Furner has her Master's in English Language and Literature and lives in Grand Rapids, MI, with her husband and daughter. She has been published in HuffPost Personal, Sammiches and Psych Meds, and multiple Medium publications. For more of her writing, visit her website jenniferfurner.com.