Birth en un tibol

Mamita specialized in nursing premature babies and she was very good at it. For several years, she was in charge of a premie floor at a large hospital en La Habana and she consistently achieved a lower mortality rate that even that of the U.S.. She was fierce about keeping the babies alive and her excellent track record led to her appointment as head of nursing of Fidel's flagship children's hospital. (She quit the position after a few years due to disagreements with Fidel and became a housewife.)

When I asked about her interest in premie babies, Mamita told me the story several times of her perilous birth: she was born in a tibol, a premature baby herself, and almost discarded with the feces.

As mamita told me, abuela was seven months pregnant and living en la finca Aguacate with abuelo. One day she needed to go to the toilet and abuela decided to use el tibol instead of going out to the outhouse. Afterwards, the story goes, bisabuela Angela picked up the tibol to empty it and, to her surprise, found there a baby, a tiny premature baby that abuela had delivered unaware.

Bisabuela Angela then took over the premie's care and mamita had spent her first few months nestled for warmth between Angela's old breasts. I asked once why abuela had not taken care of her own baby and the answer was that bisabuela's breasts were more suited to keep the baby warm: mamita would join her hands to indicate this tiny baby that would fit in the palms of the hands and thus would fit in an old woman's cleavage.

I kept this story in mind and believed it until I got older and learned more about babies and placentas. I learned that it is not possible for a woman to deliver a baby unawares unless she is unconscious, in a coma or dead. Abuela could not have thought she had just had a bowel movement because there is the issue of the umbilical cord and the placenta. So abuela must have known that she had delivered a child.

If mamita was left in the tibol, was it because abuela rejected a premature (hence sickly) baby or because it was a girl? (Abuela had a marked preference for boys.) Did Isabel and Angela think that she was dead at first? Why was mamita told that she was such a nothing that she was almost chucked out with the feces? Who told her this tale? Abuela in a brilliant display of cruelty?

Mamita y su hermano Orlando. Remembering the fractious relationship between abuela and mamita, I've even wondered recently whether the premature birth was an attempt at aborting the fetus. Abuela liked to live in town socializing with well to do folks, the cream of society according to mamita's cousin Graciela and maybe she felt that a second baby would further hamper that lifestyle.

As far as I can put it together, both bisabuelas (Angela and Nemesia, but primarily Angela) took care of mamita when she was a baby. Later, as mamita told me, she lived most of the time with her abuela Angela and abuelo Abelardo, both of whom mamita loved deeply. The reason given to me why Angela mothered her and not Isabel was that mamita needed to live in town: she suffered from chronic ear infections that necessitated ready access to physicians unavailable en la finca. For some periods of time, off and on, mamita did live with abuela Isabel en la finca but she would talk mostly of those times with anger etched in her face. But when she talked of Angela, her face softened - "mama Angela" - as mamita called her - had been her shelter and her shield.