This Wednesday Simona, daughter of the journalist and writer Eddie Fitte and the nutritionist doctor Carolina Schattner He completed his first year of life. Although the anniversary implies a great celebration, for the couple (who were already parents of Camilo) was also a day of exposing her emotions since at the time she gave birth, doctors discovered an obstruction in her colon.
“1 year ago today, at 3 p.m., Simona was born. ‘Caro, you have an intussusception in the intestine, at 3pm we take Simona out and then they do the surgery‘My obstetrician said,” Schattner said in a post he uploaded to his Instagram account. “In that context you were born. I held you in my arms and then you went into your dad’s arms so that they continue operating on me”.
“I believe that in a certain way you were born to save me, Simonita. If not, you contributed hail of sand. Every day I ask myself: ‘why did you come to this world?’ I still don’t have it 100% defined, but the panorama is very clear. You are from another planet. At less than a year old you have given me a handkerchief to dry my tears. I love you infinitely,” Carolina completed in a post in which she shared a postcard from that birth.
For his part, Eddie recounted in great detail what he experienced that day in a text that he uploaded to the Quaderno social network. “When I go through more stressful or complex situations, I usually tell myself: ‘This is going to happen at some point and I’m going to be able to tell about it.’ After all the year that passed, I did it and for me, the merit was in that, in telling it and in going through the day that I went through, which was beautiful,” he told Teleshow.
Below is the full text by Eddie Fitte in which he tells of Simona’s arrival into the world:
“One year ago today, Carolina had intense stomach pain. Her suffering was so strong that it seemed typical of the imminence of childbirth. She was 38 weeks pregnant, and that idea made sense, what else could she be about?
“The doctors corroborated it. He had gone to obstetric wards a couple of times, and the doctors told him that everything was normal. That it was common constipation for the stage, that the baby’s position generated that sensation of pain that doubled her, or that they were mild contractions that indicated the girl’s departure, were some of the things they told her lightly.
“My position was my usual posture: be calm. ‘If the doctors say that this is normal, we will have to go through it. It will be all right’. My resource was exhausted after three days in a row, in which I began to help, every time there was intense pain, with the labor preparation tasks: the recommended stretching exercises, the work with the inflatable hip ball, the massages. pelvic, pubic, sacral, mat and posture exercises. Nothing worked.
“Meanwhile, I was writing down the rhythms and frequencies of these sharp stabs that attacked her. When a woman is about to give birth, those who guide the person or couple through that experience usually recommend different actions to take in response to certain signals from the body. Therefore, if the pregnant woman begins to feel contractions with a certain frequency (which I was never able to remember, but which was stuck on a piece of paper in the refrigerator), she can determine the time of delivery.
“Carolina was in pain, a lot, but it was arrhythmic. The frequency varied. They couldn’t be contractions. Then, he said enough, and we went to the guard for the last time. We were determined to find what one desperately seeks in situations like that: a diagnosis.
“The response was long in coming. We entered guard and the line was long. A doctor who treated her, after examining her, declared that it was constipation. “Just in case,” he added, “we’re going to do an MRI to put our minds at ease.” It was five in the afternoon, and the study was going to be done at two in the morning at that hospital.
“In the middle, the laxative that this first doctor gave him began to have an internal effect. Carolina’s body was now pushing to expel something, besides the baby. And neither of those things happened. Her body began to twitch more frequently and she felt like she was going to explode.
“In a panic, internally processing a powerful laxative that they had given her and pregnant at term, they tried to give her an MRI, urging her to stay still. The study, incomplete, was torture. But there they managed to see “something.” “I see something,” said one of four or five who looked at each other without exchanging too many ideas.
“After a not very long debate, they told us the steps to follow.
“They had decided to do an emergency cesarean section. Remove Simona, our daughter, and operate on Carolina to remove the obstruction that she had in her colon..
“’You can’t see too much in the studio, her organs are all squeezed in by the baby now. We are going to open it, take it out, see what is happening in there and proceed.’ Carolina was already listening to this on a stretcher, while she was being prepared for the process. Before they took her away, a doctor gave her a very cold picture of everything that could happen from then on. Apart from the joy of finally being able to meet Simona, the whole range of probabilities that the man gave about the number of things that could happen to the mother was chilling. “Everything will probably turn out well, we don’t know what can happen, but you have to be prepared and know all the scenarios,” she said while the orderlies began to take her away.
“They left me alone and they helped me get dressed. My brain was all white noise.
“On autopilot, I put on the ambo, washed my hands, got rid of the smell of cigarettes, and trimmed my beard as best I could to be as least contagious as possible. “Flia, Simona is coming,” I sent via WhatsApp to the family group, where she had been reporting progress in her studies. I gave what information I could with my frontal lobe suspended.
“The cesarean section is what you see in the photo. It is a strong photo, especially if you look at those in green and with crossed arms, who are the surgeons who were there to take care of Carolina when the pregnancy was out of danger. From their gestures, the outlook they were told was not the best.
“We cried and were happy in the middle of a lot of people who looked at us with concern and sadness.
“They took Simona out and I followed her through the neonatology hallways like a crazy dog after its baby. Everything was a neat labyrinth of white lights, and I walked blindly behind our dwarf, who was crying while they were undergoing the adaptation processes to the outside world. My brain was split in two. While they proceeded with our daughter, Carolina was sedated to enter her second surgery of the day.
“Meanwhile, they sent me to the room with Simona. As long as she allowed him to hold my thumb with her hand, she didn’t cry anymore. They gave me a syringe to give her milk and I explained to the little girl that a lot of things were going on, that that bearded face with the smell of sleepless tobacco was not supposed to be the first thing she saw when she came out, that I knew she was looking for a breast from its source of life and that I could only feed it through that plastic tube.
“I talked non-stop to the dwarf. It was my only company. Nutritionists, nurses, lost orderlies, the obstetrician, the one who went with the surgeon, the shift leader, everyone paraded through the room. Few on the floor understood why I was alone there or what continued to happen in the operating room.
“Suddenly, the midwife appeared with a transformed face. She caressed her back, but I felt like she was throwing dirt on my head. He told me that everything was going to be fine, with a look that everything was bad. I asked her what was wrong with her and she replied that she couldn’t tell me, that they were going to tell me. She also told me that it was not good for me to have Simona alone. She told me that a woman was needed, that if she couldn’t she could call even her sister, who had the same smell. I didn’t like that comment, not because of Carolina’s sister, whom I love very much. She made me feel worthless, why didn’t the smell of her father help if she grabbed my thumb and calmed down? Still, I told her yes, there was no problem, I called Paula, and she arrived shortly after.
“The operation lasted four hours. They brought Carolina to the room and Simona immediately perceived the arrival of what she was waiting for. Her mother’s skin lit up as if she had been given the most effective drug. ‘What happened, what did they take out of me or what did they put in me??’, she asked me after a moment of maternal connection that I dedicated myself to enjoying. I didn’t know what to answer.
“After an hour, the surgeons and the obstetrician arrived. She spoke to me privately and explained, more words, less words, that they had removed a tumor that looked “very, very ugly.” The surgeons were more elliptical in talking about the same thing. They explained the intervention they had carried out and the context in which they worked and expressed satisfaction. Then the families arrived and everything focused on Simona and the joy of having her among us.
“The next day was Father’s Day. We started it with the head of surgery at the sanatorium, who congratulated me on the date and explained to us that what Carolina had suffered was ‘the invagination of a significant polyp that had grown very quickly.’ ‘The girl probably felt the discomfort of the tumor on her feet. and, by kicking, or by slowly pushing with his feet, he entangled the tumor with the large intestine, and that was what caused the blockage,’ this man told us with a dog’s face something that sounded considerably magical. What he explained was that, since something was bothering the baby’s foot, he kicked it so that it wouldn’t bother her anymore, and thanks to that mess, the tumor was isolated, thus protecting her mother. In other words, thanks to the latter, the cancer (because the biopsy later determined that it was a malignant formation) had not radiated to other places either and had been able to be extracted by making two cuts, in which 25 centimeters of the patient’s large intestine were removed. .
“This is how Simona entered this story of our life. The detection of colon cancer continued, but thanks to the intensity of the first months of life that newborns usually have, our minds were more focused on where the pacifier was or who prepared the bottle than on the rest, which was no longer the case. It was up to us. Whatever happened, it had to be faced so that one day it could be told.
“The story continued with more news that came with the first checks. There it was determined that they had to operate on Carolina again. As far as I could understand, the conditions in which her organs were, due to the compression that a pregnancy generates, prevented them from seeing everything that had to be removed from her and they had to operate to eradicate the problem. The operation went very well and after 15 days Carolina, once again, was going out running as if nothing had happened, while Camilo, the four-year-old older brother, learned to play with her forever life partner.
“Today, six months after the last operation, Simona turns one year old and Camilo is in the living room with her, popping the balloons we inflated last night to celebrate while Caro’s laughter echoes through the hallway.
“Meanwhile, I’m locked in the room writing this, because 365 days ago I promised the dwarf, while I gave her the syringe with formula, that one day I would write everything down for her so she would know how it was that we ended up being so grateful for the kicks she gave.” in the belly”
