So my baby’s birthday is less than two weeks away and I decided it’s a perfect time to finish the Birthing Dakota series. Thinking about her first year of life has me seriously going back to how she got here in the first place. I’m not sure how many parts this will be any more, but let’s talk about this fucking fossil that, even to this day, if I see her it’s on sight.
I have so many friends, family, and colleagues that are nurses. I have the utmost respect for the truckload of bullshit y’all have to deal with because as we all know, your jobs are so often thankless. And if COVID has shown us anything, mofos don’t give a fuck about nurses in real life. I fucks with all nurses and respect y’all so deeply… except for one, and we’ll call her, Mary because that’s her fucking name! And I’m gonna say this now, some of this will read like an awful flashback because it fucking is…
Alright so check it, I’m 32 weeks pregnant closing in on the last trimester when shit usually gets bananas when I get this crazy pain from my pelvis around to the right side of my back. It was fucking awful and according to my doc when shit felt weird or off, make a plan to head to the ER. So I do my due diligence first, and call the nurse telehealth line to make sure this isn’t the regular run-of-the-mill 3rd-trimester fuckery. I explain what was happening to Miss Catherine and sis said punch it to the ER, so we did.
We get to the ER, tell them how far along I am and what’s going on, and our good sis the triage nurse tells us verbatim, “do not go pass go, do not collect $200, go straight to labor and delivery.” With me and my wife being new to this whole thing, labor and delivery (L&D) are terrifying, but we headed there straight away. We kept go-bags in the car just in case and, as much as we could be, we felt prepared. So we finally get to L & D after getting a little lost wheeling my ass around this creepy-ass hospital.
I pull out my id and before I can hand it to the adorable admin lady to get checked in. This hella aggressive chain-smoking-voice havin’ ass bitch says “Are you the ones that just called up here?!” I knew then it was gonna be some fuckery, we were already starting off wrong. I already had an attitude cause I didn’t feel good, and this abrasive ball of sourdough just made it worse. We say ‘no’ and inform her that I was having pain, the location of said pain and that we went to the ER and they directed us here. This bitch then goes, OUT LOUD, “Oh it’s a kidney stone, I’m willing to bet it’s a kidney stone.” Now...
So before I was chilling just in pain, Dakota had been wearing my right side out, just sticking her little foot in my ribs most of the day. In lieu of this, I just assumed it may have had something to do with that, I just wanted to be checked just in case. However, because of fucking Mary, I started thinking of so many different, more serious, scenarios that started me down a rabbit hole of panic. As Mary kept talking, her favorite pastime apparently, something seemed more and more about her. Then it hit me, I called L & D a few days prior, to follow up on something my regular OB wasn’t sure of and Mary was the rude ass nurse I’d spoken with. That white-haired Miss Trunchbull looking troll told me she “didn’t have time to talk to me because she had two pregnant women in front of her face”, took my number, and said she’d call back later. Okay, 1, it’s L & D I completely understand it can get crazy but you don’t have to be a dick about it. And 2, you could’ve just led with that, sis, it’s busy call me back, I don’t need all this hostility. I immediately hated her after the realization. I just wanted her to go the fuck away.
We get into the triage room and I’m trying not to melt all the way down because at 32 weeks it’s way too early for Dakota to be trying to come on in the room. If it was something more serious, I wanted to know what the rate of my child’s survival would be; a valid fucking question. Mary then tells me “Well, don’t worry about that just yet, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, let’s just get your vitals and we’ll wait for whatever the doctor has to say.”
Mc-fuckin-scuse me?! You, the same lady who diagnosed me with a KIDNEY STONE, at first glance?! Now you want to wait for the doctor?! Sis, this should’ve been step one! I was livid and so was Dana. Luckily, the doctor came in and provided a buffer. From the language and tone she was using, Mary was seemingly getting on her damn nerves as well. At one point she dismissed her and it was the greatest relief.
It turned out I did not have a kidney stone, I had a kid that was wearing out and stretching the right side of my uterus for shits and giggles. I could deal with that, I expected that. Honestly, had it not been for fucking Mary’s trifling ass, I would’ve stayed calm and just enjoyed the confirmation that I was learning my child’s personality already. We could chalk it up as having one of those fun tv false alarm hospital moments. Mary ruined any chance of that being a thing.
So we go back home and we make it another few weeks without incident. In that time, I’d started maternity leave, I was in peak nesting mode, and I was calling Braxton Hicks ‘Johns’, we were that close; things were going well. Then one Saturday I was contracting back to back, I’m talking Johns everywhere, I knew I was in early labor. However, I didn’t mention it to anyone and I just focused on cleaning up the entire house for the millionth time that day. Night came and the Johns were still johning, and I continued to carry on with my business. My birth class facilitator, Tina, said until your water breaks you can pretty much just labor at home so I wasn’t in a big rush. I felt awful, I was getting dizzy spells and had to take breaks often, which is completely contradictory to the frenzied cleaning nesting brain had me doing. Nevertheless, I persisted, and I decided to feed the fur babies.
The funny thing about a third-trimester belly, is they’re big, reduce your line of sight, and your center of gravity is constantly changing. While feeding the dogs, I decided to fuck around and find out and slipped on the squeaky clean floor. Luckily, I caught myself in a damn near split position before I could hit the floor. I could’ve been a hero, had it not been for relaxin. See, at that moment, I separated my pelvis and couldn’t take substantial steps without excruciating pain, I looked like Sofia Petrillo the way I was walking. It wasn’t going to work, so back to the hospital we went.
We head straight to L&D. I’m crutching my way through the creepy ass hospital once again and eventually make my way to the desk to check-in and luckily Mary was nowhere to be seen. The nurse I had was lovely, she was so sweet and attentive. They hooked me up to all the machines to check baby and I’s vitals, the standard procedure. Because of the pain I was in, my blood pressure was high, wasn’t showing signs of coming down even with my meditation techniques, and the staff began express some concern.
My blood pressure had already been hanging out in the mid-high range the entire pregnancy due in part to the Hyperemesis gravidarum and the stress of work, so I wasn’t completely taken aback by the news. I was 37 weeks and 5 days pregnant (yes, the days matter), and the doctor explained that I was early-term and induction would be the safest route to control the bp issue.
Early term is basically when the baby’s done cooking all the important bits and could be delivered safely, it’s literally three weeks shy of being 40 weeks full term. The doctor and nurse seemed genuinely concerned, especially given that I couldn’t walk and the pain would keep my bp elevated. We discussed options and they were going to leave me and Dana alone in the room to discuss it and decide what we were going to do for the night. As they’re getting up to leave we all hear commotion in the hall. I assumed it’s another mother across the hall getting ready to be admitted as well. Nope! In barges fucking MARY with a wheelchair talking ‘bout “We got a room set up for her already, I'm just gonna take her back there.”
You not even my nurse, lady, why are you even here?! She was talking loudly about me and what she was about to do to the nurse outside in the hall. I swear I heard the nurse that was trying to stop her, the doctor and nurse that was in the room with us, and Dana and I all grumble and roll our eyes at the same time. The nurse that was in there was like “I’m so sorry, would you still like some time to think it over.” Mary heard this and her ratchet ass still rolled that wheelchair closer to me, the pushy fucking louse! Dana and I exchanged glances, nonverbally communicating that we’re never going to be ready so let’s just go ahead and do it.
We were going to meet our baby!
Stay tuned for Part 3…
Oh! And it’s still fuck Mary ALL THE LIVE LONG DAY!!! I hope she fucking retired, ‘cause she was the goddamned worst, I pray no one else has to suffer her.