Surreal day

Helped deliver this morning. My Doc told me he wanted me to watch his technique ... he dropped the baby. Thank The All for the afterbirth bin! I was sort of in shock when it happened ... the father just said, "what..." All day, I would remember and burst out laughing. It happened at really inopportune times, of course, where I would have to mask my guffaw with a 'terrible cough' ... righteous. Yes, the baby was just fine! Poor thing, with her head in all that muck, just laying there, like, 'look man, this wasn't how I intended to enter the world ...'

Anyhow, then a little later on I noticed the chaplains in a room. I stood outside a few feet away, just listening and trying to figure out what was going on. I heard someone say that the baby was dying, so I went and asked one of the chaplains how old it was. He said, "three weeks", which didn't make any sense, so I went in myself (the mother, a young mentally retarded woman, was in a different room). The baby was 21 weeks. The cutoff for assistance at this hospital is 24 weeks, so they were just letting her pass away. She was so tiny ... frail. Her eyes were fused shut, but other than that she just looked so small and fragile ... almost even normal .. almost. She was lying naked in the bin, and every so often she would let out an agonal gasp. Her lungs weren't hardly developed, so there was no chest rise, but she tried. Her little heart was beating away, ignorantly unaware. There were nurses and nursing students just standing around, not doing anything for this little life who was doomed. So I just stepped in front of all of them and grabbed a blanket and covered her nakedness, and to help keep her warm. Then I took the top of the blanket that was under her, and pulled it up over her head, in a little head covering. My fingers brushed against her skull and it was barely there, it felt so paper-thin that it was probably more what was there of her brains more than anything. Anyhow, they ended up dressing her and waiting for her heart to stop before they took her to the mother, and I said, you know, it would be nicer if you let her die in the arms of her mother, so they listened to me and took her in to her.

I left and moved down the hall to another room, where a delivery was about to take place. I started to tear up, so I stopped and pretended to look at some pictures while I mustered up my strength. I went in just as an observer on this one, but started tearing up again and had to leave the room. I took a few seconds in the bathroom, shook myself off, and went back in. This time the baby was delivering, and the sight of it made me start crying, silently of course. When they put the baby in the heated bin, the father saw that I was crying and he must have thought I was crying out of joy because then he started crying as he walked over to where I was standing next to the baby. Bless his face, what innocence ... he will make a wonderful father, no doubt.

Hours later, I heard a calloused nurse say, "isn't that baby dead yet??" I wanted to slap her, but instead I went back into the room where the dying baby was. There was a wonderful nurse in the room, she was putting everything together in preparation for presentation to the family ... the blanket, the footprints, a few pictures they had taken. I asked if she was still living, and she said she didn't know and would I listen for a heartbeat? I did, and there wasn't one. There was just the body, of this little soul who visited momentarily. I don't know if anyone else loved her while she was here, but I did. Maybe I'll see her around in the next dimension, who knows ... maybe one day she'll do the same for me.