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Roller coaster of emotions when
attending childbirth
By Jack Saunders
April 25, 2006 | It’s impossible to describe, in an
all-inclusive manner, the up-and-down, twirl-around,
emotionally charged-freight-train experience of having
a child.
I remember counting, pushing, blood-soaked orifice
peering and sweaty furrowed brows.
I remember the groundhog-like peek Havyn's (my daughter)
slimy noggin first made. It reached the war-torn, moistened
surface with valiant effort and remained the clogged-drain
object for many more pain-stinging pushes.
The doctor wanted to suction her out. He nabbed a
make-shift suction cupper and began the bruising. Her
head, swelled and oozy, slipped through.
The scene was familiar. I watched with interest years
earlier at "The Miracle of Birth" tape during Health
Ed. Most kids collapsed their heads against their desks,
muddling out "eeewwww" and "siiiick." I, bright eyed
and bushy-tailed, soaked in every detail. The vagina
is a fascinating thing. No other body part emits such
candid duality. One moment it's the tunnel to light
and life, where education awaits, and the next it's
the X-rated provocateur.
When Havyn finally squeezed through, she was put aboard
the mother ship of nursery carts. She was an awakening
creature of the night, slimy and dark. Her caterwaul
pierced the air like a fog horn.
Nurses snaked her throat like plumbers to a drain,
stuffing the probes in and suctioning meconium out.
I stood between my little yelping goo ball and the abyss
from which she exited. The doctor threaded his needle,
calmed my wife with statements like "perfectly normal,"
and "happens all the time" and began the forging of
the "level 2," torn, animal-bite-like surface.
She was white and barely moving. Her marathon, 21
hours of 2-minute-apart contracting stomach muscles
was over. The cause for her laborious, courageous effort
laid 20 feet away but to her, seemingly forever.
Havyn's high-decibel concert seemed to be nearing
its finale. She was wrapped like a burrito in a pink
blanket. The nurse handed her to me and pointed to my
wife. In moments like these you forget about science
and biology. You don't pay attention a newborns black
and white, foot-long visual capabilities. When you look
in her eyes you know she's looking back. I had 20 feet
with her and felt like an armored truck driver carrying
a sack of fortune, nothing was going to stop me from
getting to my destination.
Now, quiet, clean and warm, Havyn was nothing like
the mucky monster baby who crawled from out of the dark.
She laid still and peaceful and I was soaking up this
long-awaited meeting but something compelled me to hastily
approach my wife; because, in the words of Paul Simon,
"The mother and child reunion was only a motion away."
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