birthing balls

"birthing balls" is not an obscure reference i've made up illustrating the chutzpah it takes to have children. no, birthing balls are actual rubber balls that women can sit upon during labor. i use similar balls at the gym for crunching my abs into submission. are you seeing the pattern that these balls have in all aspects of life? for those of you who don't, the pattern i'm talking about is pain. alright, that whole paragraph was totally random. sorry that you just wasted precious life seconds reading that. and that last sentence too.

this week at the hospital i participated in a cesarean section delivery AND a vaginal delivery. (sorry if the v-word scares you.) that's a momentous occasion for any student nurse: cha-ching! so, just a little on c-sections; they are brutal. seriously. with the doctor and a nurse playing violent tug-of-war on either side of the incision to open it further (they each grabbed a side with both hands and yelled, "pull!"), copious amounts of bright red blood pouring from the wound onto the ground (splattering on my white pants, rough tugging on the infant's head to release it from said incision, more blood, stitches in 3+ layers of tissue....the images are burned into my brain. but it was amazing and i loved being there! not even the smell of burning flesh from the doctor cauterizing blood vessels could have deterred me from getting as close as i could. alright, so maybe it deterred me a little and i took a step back, but come on! when was the last time you inhaled singed-flesh smell? give me a break.

and now a little on vag deliveries; they are brutal. again, i am serious. contractions are not a walk in the park. they're not even a walk in central park at 1 am without mace by yourself with a pack of wild dogs and street urchin zombies chasing hungrily after you. they're worse, can you imagine? there's contraction, ROM, dilatation, effacement, pitocin, mag sulfate, LR, O2, epidural optional. then there's a whole circus of medical professionals coming by to stick their...well, never mind. let's just say you leave all modesty and dignity at the sliding doors when you check into the hospital. and please, let us not discuss episiotomies. they give me the dry heaves just to think about them. but it was amazing and i loved every single minute of it! seeing the contractions get closer together, feeling the progressive dilatation, holding one leg during pushing, coaching through the contractions, cutting the umbilical cord, assessing the beautifully feisty newborn. fantastic stuff. oh, did i mention the copious amounts of bright red blood that made an appearance here too? startling.

throw in a good-looking doctor and a foley catheter insertion and i'd say that it was a practically perfect OB day. i've said it before and i'll say it again: i really like nursing school.

my first real sweat of 2011: induced by yoga

today was my first bikram yoga class. that’s the hot yoga. freaking hot yoga.
so i get to the place and, since it’s my first time, they have a form for me to fill out.
as i’m doing so the cute granola-esque receptionist starts to fill me and two other
newbies in on what to expect. she starts out with, “for your first time you can count
it as a successful class if you can just stay in the room the whole 90 minutes.” not
inspiring much confidence here, girlfriend. she warns against actually doing all of
the poses our first time, as this would result in death. or maybe she said nausea
and cramping. can’t remember, it’s all a sweaty blur. after her pep talk i was feeling
really good about things and made my way towards THE room. this is THE room
that they have hot air blowing into to make sure it’s a cozy 98 degree furnace. but
i live in phoenix, right? i can totally handle 98 degrees. i open the door and step
through, immediately taking an instinctual step back.

bodies are scattered around the room in the aptly named “corpse pose” and i
assume that they all died from the heat. the heat, oh my gracious, the heat. it hit
me in the face as the door opened and made it hard to breathe. it’s the kind of heat
that accumulates in a car after it’s sat in the sun for a day and half with all of the
windows up. the kind of heat that makes your skin prickle and flush in an instant.
the rational, sane person inside of me wanted to keep backing out of this hot room
of death before i too succumbed to the eyeball-melting heat, but the granolas behind
me were getting restless and pushed me all the way in. goodbye world.

i won’t bore you with all the details of the actual class, but let me point out a few
highlights: sweating through my bra, underwear, shorts, and shirt just doing the
warm-up breathing; the old man scantily clad and dangerously close to my left side
sweating like someone turned a faucet on in his pores…there was major puddling;
the man in front of me forgetting to put on underwear beneath his baggy shorts that
morning; one of my fellow newbies leaving the room in order to, as i found out later,
throw-up more than once; losing my sweaty grip on my sweaty leg during one pose and it smacking
loudly into the window i was standing next to; and, finding out that the tops of
my feet, the inside of my ears, and my both of my knee caps are, in fact, capable of
sweating profusely when provoked.

but i’m happy to report that i successfully completed each of the 26 poses, both
times we did them. and i only almost passed out 6 times! SUCCESS!!

cheeky

my bum was grabbed yesterday at the airport. by a security guard.
abuse of authority anyone?

this is the best first post in the history of blogging!

also, i have no idea how to do a blog, hence the short and sweet post with not a snippet of formatting, the generic background, and the fact that i will be unable to locate the blog for a few days after i sign out.

xoxo
nicki