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October 13, 2004

What do you mean I have to touch the babies?

That was my first thought (and many subsequent panics) when I found out I was going to be on a Labor & Delivery unit.

I mean, I love the little people. I can hold them, feed them, diaper them and make sure I don't let go of their head when I am moving them, but I'll be damned if I know what to do with one as it flies out of it's moms uterus and its all slimy and droppable and screaming and needs to be washed without being drowned by the six people suctioning it and touching it and making sure its breathing and "phew". I would want to scream and crawl my way back inside too.

All of this was running through my pea sized brain (a pea with lots of nooks and crannies) until I actually got there.

The essence of birth is so special and beautiful. It's also complicated (terrifically complicated, both scientifically and with the familiy dynamics) and normal and tragic and wonderful all at the same time. I will get to the adults and the magnitude of pregnancy and parenthood and all that stuff at some other point.

But the babies, especially the babies, I love the babies.

The babies, I have decided, contain all the information we will ever need in this world, all of this spiritual and cosmic knowledge (wrapped up in this small, smooth, napping little package), that they can't communicate with us because we are older. And as the babies grow older, they lose that intimate unspoken knowledge and have to relearn different things. Life things. And that's where we are when we are growing up until we transition in to learning about things that are not about us being alive.

Babies are a big secret, and I would like to think that within that secret is something so huge and special that we aren't allowed to know it or remember it as adults. We can just have the brief honor of feeling it from the babies.

I don't know, I'm feeling horribly existential lately. I think I need to go see I Heart Huckabees to at least be able to laugh about it.

But the babies, even though I don't want children of my own, the babies help remind me that we all come into this world tiny and fuzzy, needing naps and such, and no matter what happens, I kind of want to live my whole life like that. Fuzzy. With naps. And an expression of "I know something you don't knowwwwwwww," always plastered to my face.

Posted by missfitsandstarts at October 13, 2004 11:59 AM

Comments

I promise to love, honor, and cherish you...and make your life fuzzy with naps.

xo

Posted by: Loody at October 13, 2004 01:50 PM

Your title makes me think about Letterman.
"While you were on Survivor Island, did you get to see or touch a monk-- err... baby?"

Posted by: Louise at October 15, 2004 01:42 PM