Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [74]
As for Michael, his face was ashen with grief. He put his arms around me and hugged me. I could tell that he was stifling his sobs. So was I. But not only that. I was stifling something far worse: the thought that if I’d stayed home during my pregnancy, perhaps the baby could have survived.
At the time, I stopped myself from articulating all those terrible thoughts and did my utmost to sublimate them. But I failed dismally. I’ve heard a tragedy can bring a couple together, but the death of our second son hurt our relationship beyond repair.
I don’t know how the doctors broke the news to me, which words they used, what consolation they attempted to hand me. I only knew that I had to carry my dead baby inside of me for six more weeks, because were the doctors to deliver his lifeless body before then, my own life could be endangered. In hindsight, this is a barbaric, outmoded medical practice, and thankfully it is no longer done.
Everywhere I went, kind, well-meaning fans congratulated me on the upcoming birth of my baby. And when they did, I fixed a rictus of a smile to my face and said nothing. Even when they asked me what I planned to name the baby and what color I was going to paint the nursery, I smiled wanly but said nothing.
I was admitted to the maternity ward of the hospital for the delivery, exactly as if my son had been a full-term baby destined to live. My mother came down from San Franscico to help Michael take care of Matthew.
So, on a date I can’t remember, and don’t want to, my dead baby was delivered, and I went home without him.
True to form, I threw myself into work and tried hard not to look back. It never occurred to me that I might suffer from postpartum depression. Why should I? After all, I hadn’t really had a baby. It was only when I talked to doctors years afterward that I learned that, aside from the heartbreak of having lost my child, because I’d carried him almost to term I had the same hormonal issues as a new mother.
At the time, utterly unaware of this, within days of the delivery I was back in Las Vegas again, rehearsing my brand-new act at the Landmark Hotel, where I was booked to perform for three weeks: two shows a night, seven days a week.
Work had always been my salvation, and I intended to drown myself in the show, in singing. But although I rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed, I found that I now had a lot of trouble memorizing the song lyrics, or even focusing on them at all.
A close friend approached me during that period and asked me how I felt after losing my baby, as I seemed to be very happy. My response, “You’re right! I’m fine, just fine,” I said, then flashed him a radiant smile.
Appearing in Las Vegas is lonely at the best of times, but I now inexplicably craved solitude above all things else. Between shows, it was as if a master hypnotist had lured me into my car and ordered me to drive, because I’d wake up as if from a deep sleep and somehow find myself sitting by the shores of Hoover Dam, staring at the black water, without having a clue about how I arrived and what I was doing or wanted to do there.
My mother flew down from San Francisco to spend time with me in Las Vegas. She looked at me with the loving yet wise eyes of a parent who knows and understands her daughter better than anyone else in the whole world, and said, “Barbara, you’re not well. You’re not well at all.”
I assured her that I was just fine.
Usually I tended to spend most of my time locked away alone in my dressing room. I’d warm up, do my show, and go straight back to the hotel. I didn’t talk at all, hardly ate, and wasn’t remotely tempted by even one scoop of ice cream, usually my favorite treat. My weight dropped from my normal 120 pounds to 105 pounds.
After a week, I overheard my mother on the phone saying to my sister, “She’s dying, and no one is doing anything about