3/12/05

an old college paper revisited

I had nothing inspirational to share today, so I was digging through my archives again and came across one of the papers I wrote in college. I got an "A". Hope you enjoy it.

(You are allowed to laugh. I wrote it with this intention in mind :)


YOU MUST PAY!

Sometime in May of 1991, the stick turned blue. The realization of becoming a mother was a mixture of amazement and dread. I really wanted a new baby, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to experience all the nasty things I had heard about from other mothers.

As the days and weeks passed, my appetite increased, as did I. My waistline disappeared. My belly stuck out so far in front of me I would have thought my toes had gone too, if my feet hadn’t hurt so much from swelling. My hormones caused turmoil with my emotions. I laughed about things that were not funny and I cried because I dropped my dinner on the floor.

Two weeks after my predicted due date, I checked into the hospital. Anticipation was high. “Today is the day, “ I said out loud to no one in particular. On December 30, 1991 at 9am, a nurse led me to a room where I was to be poked and prodded and starved half to death for the next several hours. I was made to dress in a drape which barely covered my oversized pregnant behind and forced to wear a small plastic cup over my nose. This mask smelled of some chemical which made my stomach turn, and it was so tight to my face it actually made it more difficult to breath in spite of the extra oxygen it was feeding me.

Soon my room became a pit stop for, it seemed, every nurse in the hospital. The only nurse I saw more than once was my labor coach, a short stocky woman who might have been a prison guard rather than a nurse. Every nurse that came in either examined my insides with her fist or injected me with needles. After being punctured at lest a dozen times, a nurse was able to place an I.V. in the back of my hand and take one measly blood sample. I’m no doctor, but that ratio seemed a little unbalanced to me.

Sometime during all of this I heard, “I’m sorry, but I am having trouble finding your veins.” This seemed little compensation for being turned into a human pincushion. At this time, I think all the nurses got together and decided that I wasn’t experiencing enough pain. One nurse repeatedly bumped into the machine which was hooked to the needle in my hand. This caused shooting pains to go all the way up my arm to my head. Then someone squirted some harmless looking liquid into the tube in my arm.

“You may feel some discomfort, but it will pass.”

My suspicion was that she had never experienced the procedure herself or that she was secretly trying to torture me. I felt like I had been skinned and dipped in pool of alcohol and set on fire in an oxygen tent.

Several more hours passed, and I was hungry and almost too exhausted to feel any more pain. At 6pm the doctor decided it might be prudent to make an appearance. He stayed long enough to pull out another hypodermic and rejuice my I.V. tube with some stuff called Pitossin. This drug was deceptively harmless, for several minutes later I began to feel weak spasms in my belly, which quickly escalated to gut-wrenching contractions. All of the muscles in my body began to tighten and casue my arms and legs to flail uncontrollably and my face contort into frightening expressions. By this time I was trying to recall the license number of the truck that had surely hit me and choke the driver for leaving me like this. I was ready to do battle with anyone or anything that crossed my path. To add disgrace to discomfort, I was not allowed to use the bathroom but was forced to use a small steel contraption, called a bedpan. But this was surely not embarrassing enough, as I was forced to use it lying down. This is evidently an acquired talent, as I was unable to use it correctly. As a result, my sheets and my legs were now wet and quite auromatic. When I tried to get out of bed in rebellion to this event, my labor nurse literally hurled me back into bed informing me that it was time for another ”exam”.

“Good news, honey! Your cervix has dilated to one centimeter.”

“News? I’ve been dilated to a one since two months ago, you stupid *****!” She was obviously taunting me as it only added to my misery as you may know, one must be dilated to ten centimeters before a natural birth can actually occur.

After examining me, and the fetal monitors, my doctor finally realized what I had known for hours—this wasn’t working. The Pitossin was discontinued and, I was prepared instead for surgery. I was given an anesthetic and strapped to a table. Although the lack of Pitossin lessened the frequency of my contractions, they did not stop entirely, and I was now unable to move or breath through them easily as they had put an even smaller cup over my nose and mouth. I was not even able to explain this to the attendent, because being strapped to the table, I was also unable to remove this suffocating device from my face. The doctors and nurses were running around the table and chattering as if I was not actually there or as if I couldn’t understand English. I was very frightened. I had never had surgery before. Much to my relief, I drifted off in the middle of a lingering contraction. I woke up December 31, at about 11am. My labor coach was sitting next to my bed writing something on my chart. “Is it a girl?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s a girl.”

“Hot ****! It’s a girl.” She took me to see my newly born daughter. My new baby looked up at me with her radiant blue eyes and cooed. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I’ll never forget what she means to me and I’ll never forget what I had to go through to get her. The good things in this life don’t come easy. You must pay for them and the most precious things can prove to be very expensive, but always worth it.


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disclaimer:  caution must be taken when reading my blog.  i'm a new creature and the Lord continues to mold and shape me through his will.  older entries may seem to contradict the newer ones.  there's a pretty good chance that they do for two reasons.  first, because of my nature, as i strive for perfection, i will continue to fall short of the mark and should therefore be thankful for his grace and should seek his (and your) forgiveness for having been so foolish in the past.   second, i continue to grow in him; and as changes are made, i have made attempts to change my blog to reflect those changes. in this event, please refer to #1.   if you're interested in perfection, my blog isn't the place to be.  pick up a king james bible (yup, i'm one of THOSE people) and read his PERFECT word.