![]() But his body swiftly outgrew my workshop and now blooms as I tend to it daily. His rosy cheeks and shining eyes were built in my womb. Sitting there transfixed by the lullaby is my flesh and blood. When I allow myself this moment of introspection, I marvel at the magnitude of life. My mind ruminates on the lyric as I pause to consider my heart’s capacity to love. The movie credits roll as my son watches Bambi. Shirts and sent my parents out the door with a wink. After the ice bath, one nurse stealthily stuffed Mom’s bag with extra hospital baby The nurses insisted she take a bath to help her body heal, but the hospital was underĬonstruction and had no hot water. She spent countless hours gazing into my face, marveling at this tiny person for whom Soon the childless mother was wheeled away, and Mom insisted my bassinet not be removedįrom her bedside for any reason. Nursing staff to give her a different room. My grandmother quietly drew the separation curtain closed and discreetly asked the Sharing Mom’s room in a bed close by was a weeping woman who grieved the birth ofĪnother stillborn baby. Everyone crowded around me, the beloved firstborn grandchild on both sides of theįamily. My maternal grandparents were eagerly waiting to greet us in the recovery room. Mom lost three pints of blood and later passed out in the bathroom. Eventually I was born into the world, my slippery cocoon too, with a swarm of student No one mentioned any options to manage the pain, and mom didn’t know to ask. “Didn’t you go to lamaze class?” the nurses asked her unsympathetically. T he midwife told her to save her tears for when she has to push because contraction pains aren’t the hard part. Mom cried out and removed every item of clothing in her agony. Pitocin causes the uterine walls to squeeze with intention. Silently returned the knob to its former position. ![]() Throughout the day, different nurses entered the room, adjusted the knob as they exclaimed the pressure was too high, then whispered feverishly with other nurses and Her blood started to creep up into the tubes, so to counteract the vacuum they increased the IV pressure like a fire hose. Finally, the IV was in place and the Pitocin was dripping. They wrapped it up and tried again on the other arm. After several attempts, blood spouted from her arm like a fountain. On their first attempt to start an IV, the needle plunged below the skin’s surface, but her slippery blue vein rolled away from the sharp tip. T hey determined Mom’s body was not progressing fast enough after her water broke, and labor needed to be induced. A gaggle of student nurses plus a midwife were assigned to her care. On the night of her due date, her water sprung a slow leak she didn’t go to the hospital until 4:00 in the morning. Mom describes being in labor as worse than being struck by lightning. Who had crossed the picket lines every day. Tensions remained high in the workplace when nurses, who successfully went on strike for almost six weeks, were thrown back into the whirr of providing daily healthcare alongside the nurses N urses across the country were feeling vulnerable and undervalued, facing high layoff rates and having little protection for job seniority. Tensions had been high leading up to the historic strike. Had dissipated and more than 6,300 nurses from 16 hospitals in the Twin Cities area had returned to work. ![]() More accurately, I was born days after the largest nurses’ strike our nation had witnessed When asked to tell the story, Mom always starts by prefacing that I was born during ![]()
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