Birth first birth - Stories and Text Pastebin

TEXT 175

Birth first birth By fishy9890 on 17th August 2021 12:42:02 AM

BIRTH: FIRST BIRTH – Vertitascara
I give you the first of the Birth series. Fittingly, it’s the first delivery I had the privilege of witnessing. A slightly late happy birthday goes out to one very special boy!
The song quoted here is “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas.
—————————————————————
February 14, 2005
My hands massage her back as her breathing slows, her low moans fading away with the end of a contraction. Sitting behind her on the hospital bed, I feel the muscles in her shoulders relax as she succumbs again to the haze of fentanyl, remaining curled on her left side in a fetal position around her basketball-shaped belly. The morning sunlight filters around the closed shades, but we’ve already been here for several hours. My face twists into a sad smile. It’s hard watching my best friend go through this, weathering one painful contraction after another. I wish there was more I could do, some way I could simply take it all away right now, but we’re still waiting for the midwife to give her the green light to get an epidural, which is what she’s really wanted all along.
Her eyes still closed, she asks, “Could you sing to me?” Her voice is small and distant, so unlike the bright and vivacious girl I am accustomed to.
“Umm, ok. What do you want me to sing?” I return.
“Anything you want. I don’t care. Anything, really,” she answers.
My mind searches for a song. I know so many, but at this very moment most of them seem to have escaped my memory. I don’t have a bad singing voice, but I’ve always been a little self-conscious about it. Call it a mixture of natural shyness, stage fright, and insecurity, if you will. But right now it’s just the two of us in the room, and for her, I can do this. I begin singing the first thing that comes to my mind.
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment’s gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind
I hear her whimper again and start breathing rhythmically as another contraction hits, and I continue to sing, my hands moving again to rub her lower back.
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
More songs pour into my mind, and I sing them as they come. I can tell that the fentanyl is starting to wear off, as Best Friend’s breathing becomes increasingly erratic with each passing contraction. Her mom and sister return, filling the room with their authoritative presences.
“Haven’t they checked you again yet?” her sister asks, her face hard set and concerned as she watches another intense contraction pass.
“No,” Best Friend answers. “But I’m so scared … I’m scared it’s going to go too fast, and I won’t be able to get the epidural.” There really is nothing else in life she wants at this point.
“Well, I’m going to go find your nurse. Because this is ridiculous,” and her sister quickly breezes out of the room, a woman on a mission, a force to be reckoned with. She returns minutes later with both nurse and midwife in tow, the midwife’s graceful presence and calm demeanor a marked counterpoint to her own.
“You’re five centimeters now,” the midwife announces with a smile as she checks my friend’s cervix, “so I’m going to break your water, and then you’re fine to get an epidural.” I watch, fascinated, as the nurse pulls an object out of a drawer below the computer desk and carefully opens its packaging, handing it without touching it to the midwife. It is long, yellow, and looks a bit like a crochet hook. Gently, the midwife inserts it and wiggles it around until a small gush of clear fluid comes out, accompanied by an earthy, foreign scent that is unlike anything I’ve ever smelled before.
The long, awaited epidural is procured. Best Friend crashes into a deep, much needed sleep, and I do the same on the couch to the side of the room. It is uncomfortable, but at this moment, I couldn’t care less.
———————————————————
“Oh my God, I feel like I need to take a dump!” Best Friend exclaims as she finishes pushing with a contraction.
“You’re hilarious!” her nurse proclaims with a hearty laugh, her round body and short, tight curls shaking as she does so. “I wish all my patients cracked jokes like you while pushing.” And we all share her laughter. I’m standing by the bed, holding up my friend’s left leg, while her sister and mom stand opposite, holding her other leg and hand, respectively. The midwife sits on the end of the bed, a sterile glove on her hand, and the nurse is to my right, charting and busying herself with preparing the room for delivery between contractions. We’re the girl power team, assembled and ready to go.
“No, I’m serious. Are you sure it’s the baby? Because I really feel like I need to go,” she insists.
“Don’t worry, it really is just the baby’s head you’re feeling,” the midwife assures her, smiling.
“But you would tell me if I was pooping, right? You’re not just lying to me to make me feel better?”
“We’re really not. Believe me, I’d tell you if you were,” her sister replies with a sly smirk on her face, and Best Friend rolls her eyes in response.
“You’re getting another contraction. It’s time to push again,” the nurse breaks in. “Take a deep breath in and hold it. Then push down into your butt like you really are taking the biggest dump of your life.”
And she does just that. Re-energized from her nap, she is incredibly strong, as if her body is just built to do this. Perhaps it is. And as she pushes, I look down and spot a little bit of her baby’s head, complete with a small amount of fine brown hair. It appears so small at first, but it grows bigger and bigger with each contraction, until suddenly the entire top of the head is visible, looking impossibly large. My eyes go wide with oh-my-gosh-that-actually-fit-through-there astonishment. The midwife moves her long, brown hair away from her face, pulls sterile gloves onto both hands, and resumes her perch on the end of the bed.
With another push or two, the entire head is out, and the rest of the baby’s body tumbles out swiftly into the midwife’s waiting hands in a miniature tidal wave of amniotic fluid, as we all cheer. She lifts him carefully onto Best Friend’s abdomen, where a second nurse moves to dry him. “Who wants to cut the cord?” the midwife asks us, while she clamps the long, spiraling umbilical cord.
“I will,” my friend’s mom answers with traces of tears in her eyes, grasping the scissors in her waiting hands and cutting the tough cord between the two clamps.
I gaze at the scene, which has left me floored and speechless. It’s beyond beautiful. It is powerful and so very real. Best Friend holds her newborn son in her arms, her visage covered with a peace that’s been rare in the last few stressful months. Her nurse moves fluidly around the room, a big smile plastered on her jolly face. This is what I want to do, I hear in my mind. If I could do any area of nursing, I think this would be it. Well, maybe pediatrics might be interesting too, but really, just this. Because this is amazing. I may still be slogging my way through the last semester of prerequisite courses for nursing school, but my mind is made up here and now on this Valentines Day unlike any other I have ever known in my nineteen years.
And just like that, a love affair is born.

Recent Pastes

They say if its too[...]

Raw Paste

BIRTH: FIRST BIRTH – Vertitascara

I give you the first of the Birth series. Fittingly, it’s the first delivery I had the privilege of witnessing. A slightly late happy birthday goes out to one very special boy!
The song quoted here is “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas.
—————————————————————
February 14, 2005
My hands massage her back as her breathing slows, her low moans fading away with the end of a contraction. Sitting behind her on the hospital bed, I feel the muscles in her shoulders relax as she succumbs again to the haze of fentanyl, remaining curled on her left side in a fetal position around her basketball-shaped belly. The morning sunlight filters around the closed shades, but we’ve already been here for several hours. My face twists into a sad smile. It’s hard watching my best friend go through this, weathering one painful contraction after another. I wish there was more I could do, some way I could simply take it all away right now, but we’re still waiting for the midwife to give her the green light to get an epidural, which is what she’s really wanted all along.
Her eyes still closed, she asks, “Could you sing to me?” Her voice is small and distant, so unlike the bright and vivacious girl I am accustomed to.
“Umm, ok. What do you want me to sing?” I return.
“Anything you want. I don’t care. Anything, really,” she answers.
My mind searches for a song. I know so many, but at this very moment most of them seem to have escaped my memory. I don’t have a bad singing voice, but I’ve always been a little self-conscious about it. Call it a mixture of natural shyness, stage fright, and insecurity, if you will. But right now it’s just the two of us in the room, and for her, I can do this. I begin singing the first thing that comes to my mind.
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment’s gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind
I hear her whimper again and start breathing rhythmically as another contraction hits, and I continue to sing, my hands moving again to rub her lower back.
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
More songs pour into my mind, and I sing them as they come. I can tell that the fentanyl is starting to wear off, as Best Friend’s breathing becomes increasingly erratic with each passing contraction. Her mom and sister return, filling the room with their authoritative presences.
“Haven’t they checked you again yet?” her sister asks, her face hard set and concerned as she watches another intense contraction pass.
“No,” Best Friend answers. “But I’m so scared … I’m scared it’s going to go too fast, and I won’t be able to get the epidural.” There really is nothing else in life she wants at this point.
“Well, I’m going to go find your nurse. Because this is ridiculous,” and her sister quickly breezes out of the room, a woman on a mission, a force to be reckoned with. She returns minutes later with both nurse and midwife in tow, the midwife’s graceful presence and calm demeanor a marked counterpoint to her own.
“You’re five centimeters now,” the midwife announces with a smile as she checks my friend’s cervix, “so I’m going to break your water, and then you’re fine to get an epidural.” I watch, fascinated, as the nurse pulls an object out of a drawer below the computer desk and carefully opens its packaging, handing it without touching it to the midwife. It is long, yellow, and looks a bit like a crochet hook. Gently, the midwife inserts it and wiggles it around until a small gush of clear fluid comes out, accompanied by an earthy, foreign scent that is unlike anything I’ve ever smelled before.
The long, awaited epidural is procured. Best Friend crashes into a deep, much needed sleep, and I do the same on the couch to the side of the room. It is uncomfortable, but at this moment, I couldn’t care less.
———————————————————
“Oh my God, I feel like I need to take a dump!” Best Friend exclaims as she finishes pushing with a contraction.
“You’re hilarious!” her nurse proclaims with a hearty laugh, her round body and short, tight curls shaking as she does so. “I wish all my patients cracked jokes like you while pushing.” And we all share her laughter. I’m standing by the bed, holding up my friend’s left leg, while her sister and mom stand opposite, holding her other leg and hand, respectively. The midwife sits on the end of the bed, a sterile glove on her hand, and the nurse is to my right, charting and busying herself with preparing the room for delivery between contractions. We’re the girl power team, assembled and ready to go.
“No, I’m serious. Are you sure it’s the baby? Because I really feel like I need to go,” she insists.
“Don’t worry, it really is just the baby’s head you’re feeling,” the midwife assures her, smiling.
“But you would tell me if I was pooping, right? You’re not just lying to me to make me feel better?”
“We’re really not. Believe me, I’d tell you if you were,” her sister replies with a sly smirk on her face, and Best Friend rolls her eyes in response.
“You’re getting another contraction. It’s time to push again,” the nurse breaks in. “Take a deep breath in and hold it. Then push down into your butt like you really are taking the biggest dump of your life.”
And she does just that. Re-energized from her nap, she is incredibly strong, as if her body is just built to do this. Perhaps it is. And as she pushes, I look down and spot a little bit of her baby’s head, complete with a small amount of fine brown hair. It appears so small at first, but it grows bigger and bigger with each contraction, until suddenly the entire top of the head is visible, looking impossibly large. My eyes go wide with oh-my-gosh-that-actually-fit-through-there astonishment. The midwife moves her long, brown hair away from her face, pulls sterile gloves onto both hands, and resumes her perch on the end of the bed.
With another push or two, the entire head is out, and the rest of the baby’s body tumbles out swiftly into the midwife’s waiting hands in a miniature tidal wave of amniotic fluid, as we all cheer. She lifts him carefully onto Best Friend’s abdomen, where a second nurse moves to dry him. “Who wants to cut the cord?” the midwife asks us, while she clamps the long, spiraling umbilical cord.
“I will,” my friend’s mom answers with traces of tears in her eyes, grasping the scissors in her waiting hands and cutting the tough cord between the two clamps.
I gaze at the scene, which has left me floored and speechless. It’s beyond beautiful. It is powerful and so very real. Best Friend holds her newborn son in her arms, her visage covered with a peace that’s been rare in the last few stressful months. Her nurse moves fluidly around the room, a big smile plastered on her jolly face. This is what I want to do, I hear in my mind. If I could do any area of nursing, I think this would be it. Well, maybe pediatrics might be interesting too, but really, just this. Because this is amazing. I may still be slogging my way through the last semester of prerequisite courses for nursing school, but my mind is made up here and now on this Valentines Day unlike any other I have ever known in my nineteen years.
And just like that, a love affair is born.