I ended up in the hospital parking lot, sitting in my car because I couldn’t drive yet and didn’t know where else to go. I called my OB in tears, and she told me to come back immediately. The nurses were horrified when they saw my incision and learned what had happened. I was admitted overnight for complications brought on by stress and movement I shouldn’t have been doing.
The next morning, a social worker named Denise sat with me while Noah slept on my chest. She spoke gently, but her words hit hard. “What your parents did qualifies as abandonment during a medical recovery,” she said. “You have options.”
With her help, I was placed in a short-term recovery apartment run by a local nonprofit for postpartum women. It wasn’t fancy, but it was quiet, clean, and safe. For the first time since giving birth, I slept without fear of being dragged out of bed.