Two adults hold down a beautiful 18 month old little girl, a third stabs her with a hollow needle. They do this dance six times—until the baby is red-faced, tachyapneic, and starting to bruise. They do this until I, her mother, tell them that’s enough. In any other context, you would call this child abuse, but in a medical setting it’s called labs, and her doctor ordered them.
Healthy children don’t generally need bloodwork, but for millions kids—kids born way to soon, kids battling diabetes or cancer, kids whose bodies are not doing what they are supposed to do—the tests have to be done. I don’t often grieve the loss of normal motherhood. I try to relish that I get to raise my kids, which was not what anyone would have predicted when they were born. But in moments like this, when my dress is covered in blood—moments when I wonder if stress-induced seizures are a thing–I grieve the loss of what motherhood should have been.