I was dubious. I caught my reflection in a pane of glass across the humid room and spent a moment studying it. It wasn't afraid or scared. Not disgusted. Maybe the dip in my brow betrayed concern, but then again I've always had a cave-man brow. All in all I was pleased that my face accurately represented my feelings. Just mostly dubious. I mentally manipulated the 10cm ruler I'd been drawing with earlier in the morning, and superimposed it across my fist. That was big.
Didn't we all learn when we were kids that squares don't fit through circles, and 9cm baby heads don't come out of holes... that size? Haven't the last four hours of labor proven that this just isn't going to work out, and the baby should come up with another route of escape? The mother was putting up a great fight and making enough sound to make the titans behave, but still... I was dubious.
"Goodness," I thought, "If I was ever confused about everything going on down there, I sure have it figured out now." I'd been surprised that morning by a wolf howl coming from the relatively deserted clinic. "Baby?" I asked the replacement CHO in charge. "Come. See."
Let's call her Tina. Tina had foresaken clothing. Eschewed it completely. I had to resist the urge to jump forward and catch her. She was completely stable on her feet, but she was also comppletely thumbing her nose at every bit of legislation Newton put into law. Her stomach projected her center of gravity well over her feet, but the principles of physics had given her a wide berth- anything knows the times when it's advisable to leave a woman alone. Because of hormones and such.
Well let's check out this room... Mattress on the floor- I wonder if it has always been brown. Plastic sheet over the mattress- I later wished I would've used it as a poncho. Glass cabinet in the corner- Good. It was harboring all the tools I'd seen relating to child birth.
As I was debating whether privacy was culturally significant enough to close the windows Tina was pacing by, the nurse galloped past me, a needle in her hand leveled like a lance. A handful of cc's of oxytocin later, Tina was really behaving like a woman who was going to drop a baby between her legs. The "water" that had broke earlier was just an appetizer to the main event I was sure.
"Shouldn't I be feeling weird about this?" I thought as I eased her down onto the mattress. It was at this point, as I wiped the slickness from Tina's legs with a lapa, being stared at furiously by her painful lookin vagina, that I took a moment to glance around the room. My brief, aforementioned internal dialogue with the pane of glass concluded, I straightened and took stock of the situation again. The nurse had taken off her shirt. Okay, weird. Roll with the punches. The replacement CHO was sitting on a pile of sacks in the corner, his eyes giving me a sparkling 'Thumbs up, dude! You got this!" he had confided to me earlier that he really hadn't done many deliveries before so he was really glad myself and the nurse were there. Translation: Help. Tina being the room's only other occupant, I guess there couldn't have been a deafening uproar as he said, "I'll be back soon." The disbelief those words had saddled me with vanished as I spied him clinging to a motorcycle, revving away. Um. Okay.
Between her screams at me to find her mother, give her a drug drip, and generally not let this be happening, Tina and I got along quite well. Drinks of water were easy to give, and I could tell the crunching pain in my hand was infentesimal next to her own as she wrung my fingers. How do I make this woman's pain stop?
Solutions I thought of: Jump on that big belly... It'll shoot that baby out like a banana. Or- get a snorkel mask and go in there after it.
My second strategy was partial prophecy as I found my latex-gloved hands exploring the unseen topography of the baby inside her. At the nurse's request to "make sure the baby was right," I tripple confirmed that that entailed putting my hand in a vagina. It did.
Alright, I'd seen enough profiles of the birthing process to know the face should be forward and down. Or was it up? I felt the slightest bit embarrassed when I realized I was bending my head backwards, trying to see if it was the best way for a baby to escape from a uterus. Okay, I remembered this medical poem I'd read- definitely face down.
A few excrutiating centimeters later, Tina was really screaming. What's the Temne word for "PUSH"? With a meteoric entrance, the nurse joined me at the battlefield of thighs and instructed me to pull this part like so and scoop my finger here like this.
"Maam, a significant amount of juice from your vagina has just sprayed up my entire arm."
Is what I wanted to say, but instead "o-fino!" escaped my mouth as the baby's head escaped into air. As it laid on its side as we suctioned mucous from its nose and mouth, its rib cage expanded with its first breath. With his first breath. I had a vauge understanding that I'd never fallen in love with something or someone so quickly and as completely. I cradled his head and lifted his quivering body onto a dry bundle of cloth. I'd picked up babies before, but only my sister's son before had made me wish I was alone to cry freely.
Forty-five minutes later after wiping the baby boy dry, I stood in front of a chalkboard apparently giving a chemistry lesson. My mind, though, was certainly a half mile away with the life that had just begun.
Didn't we all learn when we were kids that squares don't fit through circles, and 9cm baby heads don't come out of holes... that size? Haven't the last four hours of labor proven that this just isn't going to work out, and the baby should come up with another route of escape? The mother was putting up a great fight and making enough sound to make the titans behave, but still... I was dubious.
"Goodness," I thought, "If I was ever confused about everything going on down there, I sure have it figured out now." I'd been surprised that morning by a wolf howl coming from the relatively deserted clinic. "Baby?" I asked the replacement CHO in charge. "Come. See."
Let's call her Tina. Tina had foresaken clothing. Eschewed it completely. I had to resist the urge to jump forward and catch her. She was completely stable on her feet, but she was also comppletely thumbing her nose at every bit of legislation Newton put into law. Her stomach projected her center of gravity well over her feet, but the principles of physics had given her a wide berth- anything knows the times when it's advisable to leave a woman alone. Because of hormones and such.
Well let's check out this room... Mattress on the floor- I wonder if it has always been brown. Plastic sheet over the mattress- I later wished I would've used it as a poncho. Glass cabinet in the corner- Good. It was harboring all the tools I'd seen relating to child birth.
As I was debating whether privacy was culturally significant enough to close the windows Tina was pacing by, the nurse galloped past me, a needle in her hand leveled like a lance. A handful of cc's of oxytocin later, Tina was really behaving like a woman who was going to drop a baby between her legs. The "water" that had broke earlier was just an appetizer to the main event I was sure.
"Shouldn't I be feeling weird about this?" I thought as I eased her down onto the mattress. It was at this point, as I wiped the slickness from Tina's legs with a lapa, being stared at furiously by her painful lookin vagina, that I took a moment to glance around the room. My brief, aforementioned internal dialogue with the pane of glass concluded, I straightened and took stock of the situation again. The nurse had taken off her shirt. Okay, weird. Roll with the punches. The replacement CHO was sitting on a pile of sacks in the corner, his eyes giving me a sparkling 'Thumbs up, dude! You got this!" he had confided to me earlier that he really hadn't done many deliveries before so he was really glad myself and the nurse were there. Translation: Help. Tina being the room's only other occupant, I guess there couldn't have been a deafening uproar as he said, "I'll be back soon." The disbelief those words had saddled me with vanished as I spied him clinging to a motorcycle, revving away. Um. Okay.
Between her screams at me to find her mother, give her a drug drip, and generally not let this be happening, Tina and I got along quite well. Drinks of water were easy to give, and I could tell the crunching pain in my hand was infentesimal next to her own as she wrung my fingers. How do I make this woman's pain stop?
Solutions I thought of: Jump on that big belly... It'll shoot that baby out like a banana. Or- get a snorkel mask and go in there after it.
My second strategy was partial prophecy as I found my latex-gloved hands exploring the unseen topography of the baby inside her. At the nurse's request to "make sure the baby was right," I tripple confirmed that that entailed putting my hand in a vagina. It did.
Alright, I'd seen enough profiles of the birthing process to know the face should be forward and down. Or was it up? I felt the slightest bit embarrassed when I realized I was bending my head backwards, trying to see if it was the best way for a baby to escape from a uterus. Okay, I remembered this medical poem I'd read- definitely face down.
A few excrutiating centimeters later, Tina was really screaming. What's the Temne word for "PUSH"? With a meteoric entrance, the nurse joined me at the battlefield of thighs and instructed me to pull this part like so and scoop my finger here like this.
"Maam, a significant amount of juice from your vagina has just sprayed up my entire arm."
Is what I wanted to say, but instead "o-fino!" escaped my mouth as the baby's head escaped into air. As it laid on its side as we suctioned mucous from its nose and mouth, its rib cage expanded with its first breath. With his first breath. I had a vauge understanding that I'd never fallen in love with something or someone so quickly and as completely. I cradled his head and lifted his quivering body onto a dry bundle of cloth. I'd picked up babies before, but only my sister's son before had made me wish I was alone to cry freely.
Forty-five minutes later after wiping the baby boy dry, I stood in front of a chalkboard apparently giving a chemistry lesson. My mind, though, was certainly a half mile away with the life that had just begun.
Wow, Jared, you had Jane and I falling over laughing in the kitchen. What am amazing story. You are quite the writer. Humorous and also very beautiful.
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