Baby Mine

"Invalid Response"VisionWriter

The cold outside frosted the window of the hospital room.  It was snowing; the first snow of the season, according to the talking head on the television above my bed.  I had been lying in this room for hours.  I wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else.  Everything in the room smelled antiseptic, sterile.  The sheets on the bed were stiff; probably from too much starch. 

Uncomfortable in my bed, I pulled the bed-sheets over my chest.  I had begun to feel pressure in my legs.  I was scared and could feel my heart beating fast.  Anticipating what was coming, I called for the nurse who was standing outside my door.  I could hear her stop talking to the other nurses in the hall; then she came into the room.  As she neared my bed the pressure I felt had begun to move into my inner thighs.  I looked up at her, tears welling in my eyes.  She looked down at me.  She didn’t look friendly.

“Calm down,” she said matter-of-factly, “you’re going to be just fine.”  The nurse put my right hand in hers.  I wanted it to be because she cared about what was happening to me.  Holding my right wrist, she placed two fingers under my hand to take my pulse.  I felt alone and afraid.  The nurse leaned over me and put the cold round stethoscope piece under the top of my gown.  I could feel my heart beating wildly.  The nurse moved the stethoscope away from me – my heart felt like it was going to come out of my chest.

“Your heart is racing.  I know you are frightened.  I need you to focus when you feel the pain.  Try looking at something calming, like the snow falling outside.  And breathe for me, in and out, in and out, very slowly.  Can you do that?” asked the nurse, all the while watching a beeping monitor at the side of my bed.  I shook my head.  I didn’t know if I could breathe steady for her or not.  I didn’t want to make her mad.  She was the only one who helped me.

On the other side of the bed was a machine that spit out long white streams of paper with squiggly lines on it.  The nurse went around my bed to look at part of the paper coming from the machine and turned toward me.  She wasn’t smiling.  “I want you to take very deep breaths right now and try to relax.  You are going to be fine,” the nurse said to me.  She didn’t convince me.

It didn’t feel like I was going to be fine.  It felt like someone was shoveling gravel around in my belly.  The pain was getting worse.  “I think this one is going to be really big,” I told the nurse, my voice shaking. 

“Turn over on your side,” she replied.  She began to fasten a large strap around my middle.  It had a small round piece connected to it.  It hurt when she pulled the strap buckle tight around me.  I felt a wave of pain that started slowly and built to an intensity that made me gasp.  I just didn’t think my body could take any more suffering.  Tears began to well up in my eyes.  In a moment, I felt relief.  The pain stopped. 

The nurse continued pushing buttons and adjusting the little monitor on my stomach.  As she finished moving it around she pushed a red button on the paper spitting machine and we could hear the fast, small thump of a heartbeat.  I had no time to think about the amazing sound.  Another wave of pain washed over my stomach so quickly I couldn’t breathe—or scream.  My tears fell freely now.  I watched the monitor on my belly began to move up and down as it clung to the middle of my body.  A large tight peak of skin had formed on my belly and pushed against the strain of the strap.  I could see something moving under the skin of my bared stomach where the nurse had lifted my hospital gown.  It was alive but alien to me.  It was causing me so much pain.  It was crazy, I thought, this pain.  The thumping sound coming from the monitor on my stomach was now very fast.  Sometimes it would disappear and then reappear again.  What was happening to the little thing inside me?  Was it experiencing the same pain I was?  Another wave came.  This time the pain felt like small pieces of broken glass scraping the insides of my body.  I writhed and screamed loudly.  The pain was terrifying.  Why do people do this, I thought, and some of them more than once?

During one of my painful episodes my nurse had called for a doctor.  The doctor came into my room.  Though he was wearing a mask I could see he had green eyes.  My boyfriend had green eyes.  I missed my boyfriend.  The doctor told me he’d take ‘good care’ of me and busied himself checking instruments and putting a green sheet over a table that slid out from under the foot of my bed.  I watched him as he gave orders to my nurse to help him check my ‘dilation’ and find out what ‘degree effaced’ I was.  I didn’t understand the terms.  I just knew it meant they were going to have to poke at me again.

I was having a period of relief as I watched other nurses with masks on their faces come in to prepare my room for what they called ‘delivery.’  My nurse held my hand while she rubbed my back.  Lying on my side, I curled my legs up underneath me.  Weeping, I waited for the next wave to overtake me.  I didn’t have to wait long.

The terrible pain I was in seemed to come to end with the tremendous urge to push.  I wasn’t sure what would come out only that I needed and was ready for it to.  Nurses surrounded my bed and held my shoulders down and legs apart with elastic hands.  Their faces hidden by white masks and heads covered by little green caps, they would have frightened me under normal circumstances.  I was glad they were by my side.  I wanted them to rip the thing from me and put me out of my misery. 

“On this next contraction, push,” shouted one of the nurses; not mine.  I had become used to pushing when the pain wave hit.  It seemed the thing was caught inside between my legs.  The doctor told me he needed to do an ‘episiotomy’ to give it more room to come out.  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and waited for the next wave.  I didn’t feel the scalpel cut into my flesh.

The last push before it came out of me I felt a burning deep between my legs.  It was more intense than the waves of pain I had had before.  It started like a tiny burn and grew to a raging fire; the flames licking my inner thighs.  Right then the doctor had all the nurses join him at the foot of my bed.  They hurried with blankets and plastic hoses and little bottles of something they applied with Q-tips. As I watched all these people looking intensely at some amazing thing happening between my legs, exhaustion from all the work I had done the hours before caused me to slowly slip into a strange rest.  I was awakened by the doctor who told me I had one more small push to perform.  I had to push out ‘the placenta,’ he said.

Soon a soft rhythmic shrill was the only sound in the room.  The small quick bursts coming from the little thing made us aware of its presence.  The nurses and the doctor were silent behind their masks.  Both had creases around their eyes as if smiling.  I was on my back with my legs still open.  The doctor was cleaning between my legs with white pads that would get red as he wiped.  It hurt.  Sweat dripped down my back and legs.  The hospital gown stuck to my underarms and sides.  The little wrapped thing in the nurse’s arms squirmed and kicked its blankets as my nurse put it into a small clear crib.  I couldn’t see it from my bed. 

Another nurse came in the room.  She wasn’t wearing a mask.  She looked over into the small crib where it was.  She smiled.  The two nurses spoke to each other under their breath.  The doctor nodded as he cleaned his hands in the sink by its crib.  They looked over at me and became quiet.  The silence in the room made me feel alone again. 

I had given birth to a baby I could not keep.  The counselor told me it was for the best; that I was too young to raise a child.  I signed some papers about it.  I wasn’t sure now if I should have signed them. 

I lay back in my bed.  I was cleaned and stitched up.  The nurses redressed me in a fresh gown.  I sat up when a new group of nurses came in to see to the tiny newborn in the plastic crib.  I watched them attend to it.  The nurses wouldn’t let me see it.  They said it would make it harder.  I was very sad that I’d never hold it.  Warm tears began to roll down my cheeks.  I knew it was going to somewhere I’d never know.