Miss Kolka

producing her own life

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Who's Anatomy? | 24 novembre 2009

When you lie in hospital for more than 6 weeks and you are a total sucker for hospital tv series such as ER or Grey's Anatomy, you almost start making your own hospital drama, listening in on what's going on with your neighbours, asking questions, following the staff's routines and just become over all curious about everything because you have so much time. I would'nt call it my "journalistic elements" because frankly I've never been convinced of my own wish to belong to that club. But I have a thirst for knowledge. Even if some might called it plain old fashioned nosyness.

So 6 weeks, 2 rooms, 8 roommates and countless lovely midwives later I have learn so much about the female body, pregnancy, especially risky ones and newbornes that Im not sure a medical degree would have taught me more. Well ok, Im not an expert of course but sometimes it sure feels like it. Roommates can be as different as they are many: the smoker who went outside 4-5 times a day although the doctors kept telling her quitting was the best option for her too-small baby to grow stronger, the lovely danish positive one that had gone through one babyloss and one healthy baby before - she gave birth to a healthy little girl, 2 kilos in week 33 and was allowed to take her home only a week later, the sri lanka princess who's doctor husband didnt trust the establishement and always thought he knew better, the most-definately middle age lesbian expecting twins who rarely, if ever, said a word and now the algerian mother of 2,having an opinion on almost everything and sharing thoughts in a mixture of french, arabic and danish. I tend to understand most she says though, which for now is a good thing.

So women lie here for multiple reasons, because they've started labour too early, because they have too much/too little amniotic fluid, because one of the twins is too small/too big or because their cervixes are faulty and they need a cerclage or have one like me. Most stay for a few weeks, some just overnight and others for long months. And for those staying longer, routine things like getting the food on time (rugbrød and always some pork assemble for lunch) becomes highly important. I was almost beside myself when the "cake-wagon" didn't come one evening, even a simple cake becomes heavenly in here - although cake baked by the hubby is always a 100 times tastier (lucky me - we have "date nights" where he comes with food, often homemade and we eat and lie together in my hospital bed).

Lying here it almost seems like pregnancy is anything but a routine thing...there are just so many things that can go wrong - chemical or hormonal unbalance, strange hand diseases, babies stopping to move, mothers almost bleeding out or worse. We can only be thankful to live in the western world where knowledge, equipment, right medicine and handpower are available. Sometimes I dont think people realise how much of a miracle it is to have children though and we take it too much at a face value. But that's just because I see the world through my eyes. Women today are supposed to handle everything all the time (the demand on men is getting stronger as well) but sometimes it is necessary to slow down and acknowledge we arent robots and that expecting mothers need to rest more - Is our life which already is full with work, family, friends, shopping, cleaning, hobbies worth stressing over? Isn't it just ok to take some periods of "Off time"? Of course most pregnancies will work out perfectly fine, thank god but its not always the case. And If there is anything all these women have tought me is that they are scared. Very scared. They will do ANYTHING for their baby to be born healthy but in some cases it might even be too late.

Unlike the tv-series that have to remain sexy so people can watch all the gross medical stuff alongside it, there aren't many sexy stories here at the department of mother and child - mainly because most of the staff are women helping other women to give life and only two of the doctors are men, and although they are great men they are maybe not love-story material. The real love stories here are parents with their newborn children roaming the halls, happy and relieved their little angles have arrived safe and sound.

Publié par Kolka à 11:47:56 dans Miss baby blabla | Commentaires (0) | Permaliens