old emails from africa #3

may 2004, sanyati baptist hospital, zimbabwe africa.

after this week of work at the hospital i’ve come to a distinct and new
realization. the setting for this realization that flew itself into my mind with
the speed of a supersonic jet whizzing through my frontal lobe was a room full
of intense screams of pain and sights that shouldn’t be allowed by god before
human eyes. the realization was this. whoever said that giving birth was a
wondrous and beautiful thing, must have been smoking something serious! i make
this statement with all sensitivity and compassion toward mother and child, i
assure you. i’ve spent the majority of this week working in the maternity ward
and have had the chance to deliver my first and many other babies to expecting
mothers. i’ve had the chance to stimulate some very flat babies to take their
first oxygen, ambu. bag, and chest compression assisted breaths and watch their
color wonderfully change from blue to a very pleasant pink. the chance to, quite
against the loving and caring grain of my being, slap a newborn baby’s feet hard
enough to send them into a deep cry of pain and therefore awaken them and
encourage their first breath after c-section sedation. and the chance to find
that a baby girl named precious whom i had just delivered was immensely
tickle-ish and did her best to smile and laugh as much as she could while beaing
cleaned, weighed, and wrapped in blankets for her mother(have to say that was
immensely fun).
after all of these new but everyday experiences i want to propose a slight
change in the painful, dirty, gooey, and loud process that god’s set for present
birth. (this is completely in jest, but if god’s interested, we can discuss it
further) i would much prefer and now propose that the birthing process be some
sort of sterile and effortless silicon valley creation, in which the mother and
father, after having all the “fun” that they want, will send their genetic
material to a lab to be combined for pregnancy. the traditional pregnancy test
would now be replaced with the surprising arrival of a large package at their
doorstep with a note, “congratulations, you’re pregnant!”. and on the package is
a date, approximately nine months from the mailing of the genetic material, by
which is a sign stating “do not open until…”. on the box would also be a
scratch off card resembling a lotto ticket with which the expecting parents
coul, with excitement and trepidation, scratch to reveal the sex of their
expected child. nine months then pass, the parents happily prepare the home, and
on the due date (or somewhere near that date, to provide a little more
excitement) the package opens, revealing a beautifully developed, CLEAN, WARM,
BREATHING, and otherwise quite happy and STERILE baby.
i know this idea sounds quite odd and definitely not manageable, but
honestly, if you’ve ever been on the giving or specifically the receiving end of
a birth you know what i mean when i say i wish we would try to make something
like this a possibility. for sensitivity and compassion to mother, baby,
and…the deliverer!

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