Diaries of a nurse: The Labor Room

I remember the very first baby I saw come to life had such a beautiful mother. 

Finally, we were upgraded to the labor room! The first week was filled with gauze and linen sheets. It was an eternal process of making beds and folding gauze, and honestly I started to doubt the day to enter the labor room was ever going to come and if it was worth all that preparatory work. Everyday, women would come and give birth and there would be other nurses in-training like ourselves that were very “pushy’, so as you could imagine, we were always asked to leave and they would get the chance to watch the gift of life. Next thing we did was go in extra early and build strong relationship with all the people in the labor room. However, we would always arrive 2-3 minutes later than a birth, yet we would get to clean the beautiful newborn and dress them up and our mission was soon to be accomplished! So, the next day we got in, there was such a beautiful woman, painfully lying on her bed, but with such an angelic face. She was due on that same day but not in the labor room just yet, but we persevered and waited and waited and waited. All the other trainees got bored, so we were left to wait. Her contractions were getting closer and we were on the edge of our seats, awaiting the moment of truth, then, she unexpectedly fell asleep amidst her contractions. I went to take a breath of fresh air and saw a woman asking about her. The woman was her mother, apparently she was about to travel because her husband is waiting for her, but she couldn’t leave her daughter, so she came back from the middle of the road. Her husband -the patient’s father- was furious about his wife’s decision, as she said. She kept on asking me if she already gave birth and I just nodded with disappointment filling my soul. I re-entered the labor room and next thing I know we are walking her to the labor room, I stood next to her during the birth and I believe the most beautiful moment is when the final push comes, when the mother’s face seems filled with every form of pain and then the baby comes out and all that pain disperses. In this case, two pushes was all it took and He came to life. I could not believe my bare eyes, I could not seem to comprehend the fact I just saw a live birth, and I could not believe how beautiful it was! I ran outside to tell her mother and she started hugging me and crying; I was at the brink of tears, too. Trust me the labor room gets us all cuddly and lovey-dovey, no-one can resist the emotion overflow. The baby came out smoothly, almost an angel, just like his mother. We cleaned him and dressed  him up and I asked her what she would name him, she replied gently: “Abdulwali, like my father”. We chatted with her for a bit before leaving and trust me I never saw anyone more beautiful in the labor room. It was the most mesmerizing experience and I stick to the words I tell everyone I meet: “Think of the happiest moment in your life, how you breathed with ecstasy, how your heart pumped with delight, and how the whole world made so much more sense. Watching a live birth makes you a hundred times happier than that.”