In Utero

“Is she still breathing?”

a medical resident asked while a colleague checked my mother’s respiration. Fearful and relieved at the same time, he muttered, “Yes, I think so.”

Unfortunately for my mother, her appendicitis required surgery; however, it was Sunday and there were no attendings to guide the residents and interns while they frantically decided against administering general anesthesia, for fear of harming me, a four-month-old fetus.

Instead, Mom endured the operation with only local anesthesia to her lower body, entirely conscious of the surgeon’s every move. Through sheer willpower, Mom survived the appendectomy with only a scar across her abdomen. She didn’t scream or writhe in searing pain. According to her, she disassociated from the ordeal and then dealt with the discomfort of a scar that stretched along with her uterus for the remainder of her pregnancy. She awaited, instead, the birth of her first child, a daughter she would name Grace, after Grace Kelly.

I don’t recall much from my time in utero. But it’s possible that being steeped in maternal cortisol just as my nervous system was developing predisposed me to mental illness. There is no known family history of psychosis maternally or paternally. However, my paternal grandmother was adopted as a young child, so it is possible that branch of the family tree harbored some diagnoses.