A Life Forever Changed

May 15, 2002 repeatedly runs through my mind like a bad movie reel, forever stamped onto my memory. The birth of a baby should have been a joyous occasion, but an unethical obstetrician trampled my motherly dreams before Kimber even drew her first breath.

Because he was too exhausted to deliver my child on the fifteenth, she sustained severe brain damage from a stroke she suffered in utero twenty-four hours later. He could have called on a fellow doctor to deliver me, but instead, he told a nurse to stop my labor and send me home. After that hag used her fingers to shove Kimber back up the birth canal, I never felt her move again.

I regret two decisions I made that day, decisions that meant the difference between a life gifting tracheotomy tubes, g-buttons and lifelong diaper changes and a life of hamburgers, playing outside, falling in love and having babies of her own. Because I didn’t force the doctor to do his job, my daughter will never have the same chances in life. She’ll never truly be free, and as her mother, I am to blame.