I was separated from my son S-bop for extended periods 3 times during the first year of his life.

It still makes me cry sometimes when I think about it. The first time was right at the very start. He was born prematurely, I actually had him at my college bookstore. We were rushed to the hospital, where he had to stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for over a month. I was out of the hospital in 2 days, but I would go see him often. Some days I wouldn’t go because the pain of leaving him there was just too much. I would have to stop myself from howling as I left.

The second time was when I had severe postpartum depression. I went really crazy, hearing voices and thinking he was an alien baby or a devil baby, totally bizarre stuff like that. Because I have a family history of insanity I was terrified to tell anyone I was going crazy, because then I’d get put in a mental hospital and then who would take care of I-bop and S-bop? So I said nothing and got crazier and crazier. It finally came to a head one day when I almost smothered S-bop. I called the child abuse hot line on myself and begged them to come take him. Do you know, their initial response was one of disbelief, they tried to brush me off. They finally believed the severity of the situation when I started screaming. They sent a social worker, a very nice woman who handled my ‘case’ throughout. My relatives rallied around me and an aunt and uncle agreed to take S-bop for the duration. He was with them for 6 1/2 weeks. He left a baby who couldn’t quite hold up his head steady yet, and returned to me practically ready to sit up. I did have short supervised visits with him a few times but it was like I hadn’t seen him at all.

The third time was when I got evicted from my apartment. The family consensus was that I would go back to live with my aunt I’d originally moved in with I first came to Cleveland. I declined to do this, because though I loved my aunt and cousins dearly, their house was beyond filthy and infested with roaches and rats to boot. I couldn’t make I-bop go back and live in such squalor nor expose S-bop, a preemie who still had weak lungs, to that. Living with the aunt and uncle who took care of him when I had postpartum depression was not an option. I wished it was, because that aunt kept a clean, airy, and beautiful home. So I decided to work 2 jobs, save up enough money and find another apartment on my own. I asked my parents if the kids could come stay with them for the summer; they lived in another city 400 miles away. They said yes and my younger sisters, then in their late teens, agreed to help watch them. I ended up getting just one job, but it was for 12 hour shifts, at a plastics factory. That place ran 24/7…my shift was 8pm-8am (which solved where was I going to be at night) and I would work every single night and sometimes do a partial shift during the day. I had a few friends I could crash on their couch every now and then and take a shower. I saved most of my pay, got an apartment, and got my kids back.

It was so VERY hard being separated like that from my kids, and I especially worried about S-bop because he was a baby, under a year old. I worried being away from me so often during that first year would forever affect not only his bonding with me but his ability to bond with other people. It turned out to be a needless worry. The second and third time he came back to me there was a period of adjustment for us both. He would sit on my lap and hold himself tight and rigid, and look at me from the corner of his eyes. I would cuddle him, and sing to him. After awhile he would relax and lean against me, and hug me back. He would watch me hard, if I was in the room he would not take his eyes off me. He was so heavy I could not carry him around all the time like I did with I-bop when she was a baby, but I would constantly talk to him and hug him. Eventually he began to trust in me again, that I wouldn’t suddenly be gone from him, and relax around me.

Though S-bop knows all about the separations and why they happened he has no conscious memory of any of it…and he and I are as closely bonded as I am with my other two children. So any mothers in this situation please don’t beat yourself up over needing this time. I know this is a very hard time for you. It will work out ok.

Pic December 2006
S-bop is in the middle, with glasses
This is a child who loves me, and who has forgiven me for the times I had to send him away from me. He came back to me, in his heart.

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