2:40
To find oneself in the total care of a stranger is, to say the least, unnerving. To lack the language of your hospital is much like being a dog in a veterinary clinic, and is, to say the least, a daunting experience. So far, my adventure in Lecce's hospital of southern Italy had made me feel very much like an animal being poked and prodded, led from one room to another, not knowing what would happen next. There is already something a bit feral about having a baby, forces beyond your control taking hold of your body, so to have a gentle guide to tame your fears and hold your hand is paramount. I would have liked the partner I had chosen in marriage to have been the one to share my burden, but my leader for the night, Giuseppe, a male nurse, embodied all the characteristics you might want by your side during childbirth.
While the Italians are domesticated, some of their bookkeeping is defiantly archaic in nature. When I arrived at the hospital, my husband was sent back down to the emergency room entrance to obtain some sort of admittance paper. All paperwork done in Italy has the feeling of ancient documents, yellowed paper stamped with serious red circles and official black squares. Also, files are made in giant bound books, sometimes as much as 4 inches deep, maybe even more. Offices are usually lined far and wide in the colossal manuscripts. Appointments and records are kept like this, and I assume, hopefully, later transcribed to computer. So, I wasn’t too surprised when Giuseppe guided Pier Carlo, my husband, out the door to follow the procedure of paper passing, while he ushered me in. I bided a quick farewell and the instruction to please try and find me as soon as he was finished. We left the bags at the door because the ward was empty and we knew they would not be disturbed.
Now, I was in the hands of the staff and I would be at the mercy of nature and the very sleepy delivery ward. Led down an incredibly long, empty, fluorescent lit, and mint green corridor we entered a darkened examining room. The ostetrica arrived for the first examination. Behind an old-fashioned metal and fabric-sheeted screen, like something out of M.A.S.H, I was checked, ultrasounded, and it was concluded that I was indeed having a baby, but I was only at 2 cm and the baby hadn’t dropped. Great, I thought, it would after all be a long night, and I clutched the hope that the anesthesiologist would arrive soon and that my husband would be allowed to stay with me, although against protocol, through labor and delivery.
2:50
Next, fetal heart monitoring. Again, another darkened room, a lone machine sitting in the corner, paper-covered table. Seemingly far from delivering, I spent the next hour griped in pain every minute or so, listening to the baby’s heart. Like all the rooms in Italian hospitals, there was nothing to look at but a cracked ceiling, peeling plaster, a lone crucifix. Knowing I had nothing to fear, I tried to keep at bay all the apprehension that comes with the unknown. When would the guy with the needles come? Where was my husband? Every so often Giuseppe would pop in to check on me. Where did he keep running off to? Back to sleep perhaps, catnapping in the coffee break room on a well worn sofa, watching a black-and-white TV running fuzzy reruns of Bewitched dubbed in Italian? He would ask if I was alright, but what could I say? I continued to ask if my husband had returned, and since there must have been some sort of bureaucratic hold-up, I soon realized that if I needed to hold a hand it would have to be Giuseppe’s. At the beginning of a contraction I took to grabbing hold and squeezing down through the pain. Trying not to think about, or care, if this was in his job description. Nevertheless, he did have a calm way about him and he didn’t seem to mind. I was trying hard to keep a stoic face, a good attitude and be a team player. But, for who? Still there was only a staff of two.
3:45When I had done my hour on the fetal heart monitor, it must have been time for another checkup because I was led to yet another room. I recognized it as the sala parto, or delivery room. This room was much brighter lit. It was large and in the middle of the floor was the ominous delivery table, all stainless steel and robotic-looking with levers and arms and appendages poking out in every direction. We passed through a large doorway to an adjoining room and along the far wall were three tall gurneys standing at attention alongside their own machines and sentry-like carts of tools. I was guided to the first bed and helped aboard. Giuseppe brought me the nightgown from my bag that Pier must have passed him and (as I stuffed issues of modesty into my mental American suitcase) helped me dress. After checking with me for about the 100th time that I had, in fact, completed the course to have an epidural, I was assured that the anesthesiologist was on his way.
I then suggested it would be nice if my husband came back with me now, but Giuseppe politely answered that because it was likely that other women could be in the labor beds and “little dressed” it was customary to have husbands wait outside. There went that hope flying out the slightly opened window into the cold February darkness. I said I understood, but secretly wondered where these “other women” were on this particular night. Perhaps it wasn’t a matter of modesty, but an issue of Italian men wanting to sip small espressos and puff congratulatory cigars amidst their masculine equivalents, versus staying in the confines of the sterile hospice. Maybe meeting other expecting fathers and finding similarities in fishing, military careers, and other shared stories is more appealing than the outcries of a woman in labor. For that matter, as all Italians carry a chatterbox gene, I guess I have seen women in labor carry on full conversations of my-cousin-said-this and babies-must-do-that banter. So, like all of life’s milestones, having a baby, for Italians is just another occasion to get together and mingle, have a coffee, and chat.
Later, I found out that Pier had returned with the admittance papers after some emergency room, middle-of-the-night drama, but upon the hospital accepting me, and because I was, without a doubt, in labor, he had to return again to the front desk to pass another document saying that I would be staying, at long last, finally admitted to Ostetrico.
All was calm and quiet. With the check-up they must have found that I was now at 4 cm., with the baby still sitting high. Pier and I compared notes later because, again like a patient in a veterinary clinic, I was talked about, not to. My husband was greeted down the hall with the update when he returned for the last time, and he settled in for a round of Super Mario Bros. on my kids’ Nintendo DS. There was a slight smell of new cigarette smoke carried in on the crisp winter night air. Someone on-call near-by must have been roused from their nap. I imagined their Moka espresso bubbling to its termination on a white enamel hot plate, and I wondered if you were allowed coffee while in labor. I really had no idea how far along I was. The stout obstetrician, her elegantly dyed and styled hair disheveled from her earlier snooze, glasses perched delicately on the tip of her nose, then broke my water. It was, then, as if the gates of a great horse race were opened. There was shouting. There was a stampede to rush me over to the delivery table on my wheeled bed.
4:00
There was more yelling. I tried to ask amid contractions for a little information but the Italian language was all mixed up in the word soup that was rushing around me. “Well, this is it,” Giuseppe answered. Hmm? It like maybe I will be pushing until sunrise, but with the epidural to still soon arrive, or it like maybe my husband would come in now and we would have Hollywood’s classic screaming and pushing version of childbirth. With the gurney now pulled alongside the delivery table, I next found another person or two in the jumbled dash for delivery. All eyes staring at me, they implored me to scooch over to the delivery table. “No,” I answered. Their eyes all beseeched me, “No?” Blank stares wondered why I would suddenly resist. “I have to push,” I stated. Uh-oh, I did. This really sent them in a frenzy, screaming for the others, whomever they might be, to run. “Come on,” they pleaded again. Once more I answered, “No.” They scrambled towards me, two people grabbing each a leg. Assuming position, they must have given up on the quest to move me.
A few choice words. A push. Baby crying.
4:02
I gazed upon the fat naked baby lying in a puddle of goo and first thought about how my 3 year-old would have found this hysterical. With little graphic discussion, he had intuitively figured out that babies must come out “yucky”. Like most little boys he is fascinated with ick. The staff, however, was not as impressed, and I issued a small “I’m sorry”. Still, though, I couldn’t help but find a little humor in the situation, so when my husband finally arrived, I was beaming like the Cheshire Cat. "Whoops. It just happened." Only having completed one level of the video game, he was grinning too. Maddalena was a surprise from the beginning, so it wasn't a shock that she would enter the world in her own unique way.
Babies made in Italy, are, I'm sure, like babies made in other parts of the world, with squished little faces, flailing little limbs on bare elfin bodies, and prestine little souls. Their desire to be held and fed and cared for, bellowed out to the new world in their first breaths. The package might not be as pretty, but Italian hospitals and doctors are competent and kind. Maybe Italian bambini arrive in a world a little simpler-- no whistles and bells-- but for an event that has been going on since, literally, the beginning of mankind, what more does one need than a loving mama and papa, a waiting big sister and brother.
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