When Pregnancy Fails

Besides the completion of my necessary cases for the board exam, I spent the rest of my last days in college attending my make up duties for the 30 minutes late that I had inside the delivery room, which was already considered as an absent.

On the last day of my three days’ worth of make up duty, a huge woman was rushed inside the delivery room. I thought she was in her mid thirties. I was ordered by my Clinical Instructor to assist the case while a junior student from a college in Subic handles it. I grabbed a blank chart and was about to interview her when she took off her undies and spread her legs apart revealing herself to us. To me. And it WAS NOT promising at all. Her genitals stunk, literally inviting some flies to hover around inside the delivery room. I wasn’t astonished with the smell since I’ve encountered this before and my classmates have even worse experience. But I was shocked by the flies. Was it really that foul? I mean I can smell it but it wasn’t that repulsive. And I remember, I have my face mask on.

I didn’t like assisting deliveries. I like it more when I, myself, handle a case. I love the feeling of actively helping the baby push his way out of his mother’s womb after the nine months of confinement. Just assisting a birth is boring, so I asked Melissa, a batchmate whom I just met through that make up duty, (actually I didn’t know that she actually exists until we met about three days earlier. It was also the last day of her 3 consecutive days of 6AM-6PM make up duties) to assist the delivery instead. Besides she was in terrible need of cases.

I thought the woman just lacked the necessary personal hygiene that’s why she smells, until her bag of water was manually broken. Stinky dark amniotic fluid gushed down from between her legs streaming down to the pail underneath. The flies whirled around, flying in a frenzy as the smell of something fruity and pungent and sweet filled the cold air of the room. The onlooking nurses stepped away covering their faces. Melissa crinkled her nose, something that was noticeable even with her face mask on. The junior student nurse from Subic looked at her own Clinical Instructor for the next direction frowning.

I didn’t have to do any interview to know that the pregnancy has failed.

The fetus was dead. For some reason the fetus lived up to maturity, but the mother’s uterus refused to contract or subject itself to labor on the day that she should have given birth. The pregnancy continued until the tenth month, resulting to death of the baby.

While the junior student pulled the baby, Melissa pushed the mother’s abdomen forcing the baby out. Some of Nurses helped to. Then down came the baby and with it came some even darker fluids and debris. A stronger scent of something pungent and sweet hanged heavily in the atmosphere and we all agreed- the scent was of an overripe papaya. Melissa took the baby away from the Junior student and proceed to the sink to do the same process of tending a live neonate minus the suctioning of course.

She was about to give an oil bath to the baby to remove what we thought was vernix caseosa (Vernix Caseosa is a white, cheesy materials that covers every newborn child after the delivery. It can only be removed by an oil bath.) when our Clinical Instructor told us to look closely. What we thought were Vernices were actually the thinnest layer of the baby peeling off, much like a lizard starting to molt its old skin. Melissa held the baby boy. I was disappointed. The little boy has a really nice nose and a long curly pair of eyelashes. His lips were partly open revealing his soft gums underneath. I thought I saw an angel smiling. Melissa called my name and told me to look at what she’d do. She prodded the head of the baby and I was really surprised. The baby’s head was soft as a rubber. I had an impression of a soft hot water bottle filled with jellies inside. The baby’s bones had disintegrated.

The mother is a catholic, so our Clinical Instructor told Melissa to give the baby a little baptism. She washed hr hand with water and through her hand wrote a sign of the cross. Our CI smiled approvingly and said, “Ikaw na yung ninang nyan.” (you are now his Godmother.) I took a box outside and brought it too Melissa. Ideally the mother is allowed to hug the body of a dead infant to allow the normal grieving process to take place. But as I told you before, it seems that the nurses inside that hospital do not care about things as mundane as GRIEF and SADNESS so Melissa laid the body of the little child inside. I went outside and yelled the surname. The father approached me, helping himself not to cry, but his own eyes betrayed him as tears filled his conjunctivas.