The Joy of Bringing Life Into the World

My mother had a baby when I was 8 years old and another one when I was 9. And it was the delight of my little life then. I was just so overjoyed with these little babies at home, and I thought, “Yeah, I want to become a nurse.”

The midwife came in the morning. My father didn’t want us up in the living quarters on the first floor. He built a big fire in the washroom in the basement where my sister and I were to wait.

But my curiosity just got the best of me. Toward the evening when no news was coming, I said to my sister, “I’m going upstairs,” and she said, “I’m coming with you.”

I was bold enough to tiptoe all the way to the bedroom where my mother was inside giving birth, and I put my ear on the keyhole and as I was doing that I heard the baby cry. I ran downstairs. We didn’t dare to run in.

My father came downstairs and told us that we had a brother. Wheels were just spinning inside me, and the midwife was very mysterious. She brought a black bag and she had all kinds of instruments.

And then I asked her, “Now please, tell me, where does the baby come out?” And she looked me square in the eye and she said, “Through the big toe.”

I remember that night I laid in bed and I tried to figure out how it would travel down the leg. I knew the baby was here in the tummy. I’d seen it. I couldn’t figure it out but I didn’t ask my mother. I took what the midwife said, but I didn’t think it was possible.

I had my nurse’s training in Switzerland. I nursed for three years after my graduation and I came over to this country for a couple of years to see how nursing was here. I had no plans to permanently stay here. In the first year I met my present husband and never returned.

I am an obstetric nurse. That is where I have my most joy because it stems back to those early years. To me, a baby is just an absolute miracle of God, and to hold a baby and to get mother and baby off to a good start, to a good bonding, that’s something that I really enjoy.

It’s a miracle to see life coming into a baby as it turns from purple to pink, as it makes the efforts to breathe.

From the time that she arrives on our floor with the little baby in her arms, we start to teach her, to show her the ropes, to make her understand the process she’s going through and encouraging the bonding.

I set out immediately when I came to California to take Spanish classes. I realized there was an opportunity to use that language and I had a love for languages.

When I met my future husband, a man from Peru, he didn’t speak very much English. So I practiced my Spanish right away on him and I asked him to help me as our friendship grew.

Now I am able to function as an interpreter. I do a lot of that with the physician at my side. It is not always an easy job because often I have to translate tragedy, pain.

It hasn’t been long ago that I had to tell a mother that she gave birth to a mongoloid baby. She had no idea what that was, what it entailed. Things like that are tough.

The thing about nursing for me is to give of myself to other people, to maybe see a smile on somebody’s face that is worried or to ease somebody’s pain, or to bring somebody fresh new hope. From the time I was 8 years old, my love for the profession hasn’t changed at all. It’s still fresh in me.