If teen spirit smells like vaginas, that is.
Sometimes, I can smell a vagina in anything. Clementines, bean soup, wet grass, gasoline... given the right state of mind, my mind goes right to the scent of a woman, if you will.
Not always a bad thing, often a really nice & reassuring thing. Certain odors during labor & birth let us know that things are progressing well and that mom and baby will be just fine-- it's so deeply a developed sensory experience that there's no way in heck I can describe it correctly without coming off soundly like (as my husband would say) a "real creamer".
When I leave the unit, though. Shift done, scrubs off, are my nose hairs required to harbor the remnants of my night? When I get home all bleary and make my baby girl her breakfast before I go to sleep, do the oeufs really need to smell like ovum? Do they?
Monday, February 25, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Didja ever notice...
That as soon as you sit down to type something your children peel the skin off of each other's faces, kill and eat the cat, spray paint the bathroom with cooking oil & neeeeeeeeeed you?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Mother of the Year
Crackers, pretzels & Starburst candies for breakfast. Hey, at least the crackers are organic.
Friday, February 8, 2008
An Inside Job
I have the most important job in the world. Dig it.
Every night, me and the women I work with help mothers give birth. These wee babes grow up to write poetry, serve drinks, start wars, plant flowers, drive cars, buy houses, take steroids, steal iPods, wear leather, eat tempeh & walk their dogs.
The food chain starts here, if you know what I mean.
There are nights that 10, 12, 14 babies are born. There are nights when it's just 1. And sometimes, more than I thought was possible, we have a baby who dies. When my job is good, it's the best. When it's bad, it is truly, truly awful.
The nurses on my floor are our own perfect family. We function as the same person sometimes; anticipating, re-directing, assisting, comforting & scolding one another and one another's needs. You can't do this work if you don't love your team, your family.
Well, the other night, one of us lost her baby. We lost a baby. And I haven't been able to shake it. To stop crying.
The loss is devastating.
We don't know if she'll come back to work. And if that happens... If that happens, our loss will be exponentially greater.
FUCK.
Every night, me and the women I work with help mothers give birth. These wee babes grow up to write poetry, serve drinks, start wars, plant flowers, drive cars, buy houses, take steroids, steal iPods, wear leather, eat tempeh & walk their dogs.
The food chain starts here, if you know what I mean.
There are nights that 10, 12, 14 babies are born. There are nights when it's just 1. And sometimes, more than I thought was possible, we have a baby who dies. When my job is good, it's the best. When it's bad, it is truly, truly awful.
The nurses on my floor are our own perfect family. We function as the same person sometimes; anticipating, re-directing, assisting, comforting & scolding one another and one another's needs. You can't do this work if you don't love your team, your family.
Well, the other night, one of us lost her baby. We lost a baby. And I haven't been able to shake it. To stop crying.
The loss is devastating.
We don't know if she'll come back to work. And if that happens... If that happens, our loss will be exponentially greater.
FUCK.
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