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MAMA-KANGAROO 023
Been three times through tides of emotions and battled against hairy (but manicured) windmills, the mistresses of Belgrade’s maternity wards; I studied so much at faculty; and been able to apply so little of my knowledge during the wartime trials when no Serbian soldier........... and sometime later. St. John’s day 1993. (Dragiša Mišović Hospital) – me, under epidural, my husband who is a colleague doctor (passed testing by the Cerberus in charge of delivery exercise – “You, doctor, shut up, the things you learned are not what we teach here!”!) is giving the midwife, who has an unbearable headache, a massage (me having fun), and the entire hospital trembling while tanks are sailing off to a cold night, towards the barren plains of Croatia, the despair and – the future. Our Princess is born; about whom, a few days later, a colleague neonatologist tells me with a smile “you know, there is a hemorrhage in a ventricle…” – and my guts are churning worse than my brain, which is, luckily, under the surge of hormones, and unable to grasp the extent of the tragedy... fortunately, today, this ventricle, which was – surprise-surprise – mistakenly diagnosed as full of blood, is a high school sophomore, working sedulously on the fine cutting of her parents’ nerves (with a touch of basil), and fortunately the memories of plastic Coca-Cola bottles (a luxury in 1993), which stood for fountains of health and cleanliness, in lack of running water, are far behind us. 1994 – second delivery (Dragiša Mišović Hospital), at my request, a famous doctor was in charge of my pregnancy, in her private practice, with bills punctually paid and with her telling me, two days before the delivery, that she was going away to a convention, and that, since there was a cephalopelvic disproportion (my son had 4kg700gr), she wanted to do me a favor by delivering the baby by the Cesarean section (“Absolute indications for Cesarean section” was part of the exam I took at prof. Tasa Marković’s class – and it included, among other things, fetal head/mother pelvis disproportion). It went this way: I got a prostaglandin vaginal pill, to induce dilation; and I didn’t get dilated but squealed quietly for a few endless hours, because that is the protocol... anyway, being happy to be alive, I ask the on-call Inquisitor about my heir’s bilirubin levels (one of the hairy degenerates showed some solidarity towards the class enemy, i.e. me, and informed me that my son was as yellow as a Chinese), and the Ice Queen says “You will find it sufficient not to have him brought to you for breast-feeding...” All fierce and brutal answers that made my brain buzz are suffocated in a tide of tears; while daddy gets a satisfactorily accurate answer to the same question, asked by telephone. It’s all a matter of paying the correct amount of money – me, and incredulous idealist – but I worked with the husband of her Majesty the Doctor, we’re colleagues, even a bus driver will stop between bus stops to pick up his colleague.... 2002. (Narodni Front Hospital) – hoping that the horror that permeated everything around us had passed, we got another Princess, and the third delivery in Serbia – once again, there are some new apparitions with strange names and behaviors, who make loud threats about my child being a mongoloid, and that in failure to come for a check up at their clinics, my bloodline will perish – way to go, sister! I don’t ever want to have anything to do with any of you anymore – save Serbia and… learn how to be doctors, shame on you! My colleagues and nurses (surprise!) officially declared me a witch because I made objections against someone’s 3-year-old entering the newborns’ nursery (all visits officially forbidden, but an Assistant Professor at Medical School I attended, a great lecturer, now a brilliant gynecologist, brings in someone’s parents – granny and grandpa, while helpless women who recently gave birth are being chided for their behavior). Why do we keep quiet? Because the hopelessness of the 90ies taught us that we get our portion of happiness when we hear a healthy baby crying, because to this very day I cannot believe that nothing has changed, and I think that things can be changed, so once again, thank you.
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STORIES FROM MATERNITY WARDS Mama-Kangaroo 002
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