Adventures in Baby Birthing:

When I was called up for active duty, I was shipped off to Fort Riley, Kansas. I worked at the labor & delivery unit of the Irwin Army hospital. As a medical specialist, I was somewhere between a half-assed EMT and a beefed-up candy striper. Basically when a woman came in I got to hook her up to a machine that recorded the baby's heartbeats and I got to start IV's.

Now that was a lot of fun. First off, the gauge of the needle was honkin'. Second, nothing is as dehydrated AND swollen from fluids as a pregnant woman. YOU start an IV under those circumstances. I got pretty good at it, I'd like to add.

Occasionally I'd have to insert a catheter. But predominantly I was there to assist the RN's and whenever they showed up, the doctors. I saw many babies born, all with no pain medication whatsoever. Is child birthing magical? Sure, in the same way that volcanic eruptions are magical. Or like when rain starts falling up during a tornado is magical.

I'm not going to tell a lot of anecdotes. All I learned is:

1) If the doctor recommends caesarian, I'm not going to fight him. I'll probably give him a hug and a box of chocolates. Don't give me that crap about not feeling like a woman if I don't deliver 'naturally'! I will personally jam a watermelon up someone's convenient body orfice if he or she starts that with me.

2) If I deliver vaginally, I will take whatever pain medications I can. Hell, start me on the demerol now! I'm a wuss, I admit it. How the HELL did this planet end up with over 6 billion people on it?

3) My husband can be with me, but I don't want him to see what actually happens because I would actually like to have a physical relationship with him again after I recover. *I* don't want to see what's going on. No mirrors.

4) No damn cameras or video recorders will be allowed. If I had my way, the instant I go into labor the child would be teleported from my uterus into the doctor's waiting hands. I'll probably blog the experiences, but I really don't want them recorded for posterity. It might be good for blackmail should I need to coerce the kid into cleaning his room, but I've heard cattle prods are just as effective.

5) Placentas are icky. So is meconium and vernix. Jon can cut the cord but I hope he spends the rest of my time in the delivery room being distracted by our red, wrinkly, bundle o' joy.

6) The kid gets to stay in the nursery so I can get some rest. I'm sure he'll play hell with our sleeping patterns soon enough.

7) I don't want an episiostomy, on the other hand I don't want to tear. I'm doing all the recommended exercises faithfully. An epesiostomy, by the way, is deliberately cutting the perineum (that's the part that's between the hoo-hoo dilly and the bunghole; sorry I was getting tired of all these medical terms) so it won't tear.