Artist’s Statement: The Girl in Blue and Her Dying Newborn
2016; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 91; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1097/acm.0000000000001156
ISSN1938-808X
Autores Tópico(s)HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses
ResumoMy painting The Girl in Blue and Her Dying Newborn honors a teenaged Ugandan mother and her baby boy whom I cared for in a community-based hospital in Central Uganda. The baby was born in a rural village and died the next day shortly after I met him. Uganda’s rate of teenage pregnancy is 25%—one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Africa. Compared with infants born to mothers between the ages of 20 and 29, stillbirth and newborn deaths are 50% higher among infants born to teenage mothers.1 My poem “Girl Mother Blue” accompanies my painting to honor this young mother and her baby boy’s too-short life. Girl Mother Blue In you walked, a Ugandan girl. Flip flops, espresso skin, jet-black kinked hair Your blue dress with a big curve Like a distant road that you sped up to take And now your ninth grade desk is empty And you’re never skipping rope again Because that bundled green blanket you’re holding Holds you Blood ran down your bare legs as sharp spasms Split your pelvic bones, a tidal wave pounding Shell and stone against a red coral reef Clamped hinge cleaved open, oyster bone and flesh Squeezed, pushed, torn with a scream, until his pearly head Emerged, matted with slicked wisps of black hair, His finger-thick arms tugged and pulled, Until he fell limp into your powder blue school skirt His wet cry, a brief whimper in the midnight air As you cradled him like a doll in your red clay hut Your day old baby boy, cold and quiet like you Waited for the blanket to be unwrapped His thin skin gleamed and his dime-sized eyes opened As I placed oxygen prongs into his tiny nostrils And begged him to breathe His sparrow chest heaved and his walnut-sized heart stuttered As you stood and stared at him Your mouth covered with your blue jacket With tears glistening down your smooth cheeks For thirty minutes you held him against your chest As his tiny breaths, beats of a butterfly wing, Faded into blue and he was gone Like his father And your childhood As you departed, a mother with an empty blanket.The Girl in Blue and Her Dying NewbornRyan M. McAdams, MDR.M. McAdams is associate professor, Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington; e-mail: [email protected]
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