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BABY-KANGAROO 009
This is my mom’s experience. I was born in 1988, at the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Clinic in Visegradska Street. My mom did not have any appointments with her gynaecologist at all (!) during her entire pregnancy (bad memories from earlier times), they planned the date of my birth and her health condition was just perfect. Since she listened to many stories, my dad shaved her before the delivery (they say they laughed like crazy, everything still seemed funny then), she had an excellent book about childbirth and even though she realised that the delivery had started around 5 AM, she lay a bit more and let my daddy sleep until 7:30 AM, when she started having contractions each 15 minutes. She went to the hospital at 10 AM, when she could not delay it any longer. She had a midwife, recommended to her by her friends, who was usually present at the delivery for certain compensation in money and my dad called her immediately. It seems incredible but that was exactly what happened, although the „connection“(free of charge, through a friend) was later the manager of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Clinic). Of course, she did not have a doctor’s referral slip and that was the beginning of everything else. They did not want to admit her, so this doctor (“connection”) had to order her admission and examination. My mom is strikingly beautiful and that probably provoked one hag of a nurse (in her fifties, short and fat) to hiss in her face, while she was contorted in agony: „Look at you, I’m more beautiful than you“. Can you believe it? “Her” midwife was already waiting for her upstairs and did not allow her to be administered an enema, staying at her side all the time. So, since her friend, the doctor, called the maternity ward every 5 minutes, they delivered her almost by force. I was perfectly healthy baby. But then the agony of humiliation began. First she was thrown to a bed from the stretcher by two maintenance women (“this cow has connections and she thinks she can do as she pleases“), there was no bin to throw the sanitary towels into; nobody gave her even a glass of water until dinner. Ah, yes, it was Saturday, which is important. Since she had episiotomy and nobody had examined her, she couldn’t dress her wound herself (and it was 30 degrees Celsius outside) and the wound got infected. My mom felt she had temperature. A midwife appeared on Sunday evening and noticed my mom wasn’t feeling well. She strolled around room and finally offered her an Aspirin. Luckily, my mom brought antibiotics and started taking them, seeing that her condition was serious, but she also called my dad. Two gynaecologists come to see her and one of they started yelling at her from the doorstep: „Your friend is downstairs (according to him, not having a husband was probably a supreme insult for a woman), making scenes! Do you think that every doctor who comes to do his rounds should see you first! “My mom, no matter the temperature, could not keep silent and retorted: “You know what, if you wanted to wear a white coat you could have been a barber or a butcher, it would have taken you less time. And I don’t give a damn about your faculty education as well as you don’t give a damn about mine”. He just screamed back: “Mind your behaviour; we did not tend sheep together!”* And then my mom remembered Remarque (that’s the reason why she wouldn’t listen to any arguments against him) and replied: “No, we did not tend sheep together, you tended them yourself”. She refused to be taken to the ambulance unit (out of fear of remaining alone with them) and her wound was dressed in the room. What to say about the other things: dirty bathrooms, toilets, food, bloody bed sheets, bloody sleeping gowns. Everybody just screaming at the delivered women, the cleaning women included. Since she had no milk because of the temperature, she spent her nights massaging breasts of the woman next to her, who suffered terribly. She did not see me for 48 hours (not counting the moment after delivery when she did not see a thing) but she knew I was well. She says that she will never forget the moment when she left the delivery ward; she thinks that prisoners feel that way when they go out of prison. She had a major crisis when I was 5 – they desired one more child but she did not dare to have it. Once, in Knez Mihajlova Street, she saw a strong, tall daddy who lifted his baby together with its stroller and kissed it. My mom cried buckets then.
Footnote: * “Tend sheep” - the literal translation is kept in order to keep the sense of the sentence. The doctors tells the patient not to address him so informally.
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STORIES FROM MATERNITY WARDS Mama-Kangaroo 002
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