Seventeen years ago on this day, I
had a profound, personal experience with a groundhog. As the snow patches clung
to the frigid ground in the wee hours, a sharp pain in my back rudely woke me
up and became the snooze button from hell. I grumbled, “Oh great, I pulled a
back muscle while sleeping,” and crawled into a lukewarm bath with a book
trying to ignore the persistent pain. Little did I know that I just entered a
scary, creepy movie bathtub scene. A massive, white pile of mucus came floating
to the surface, and it wasn’t me that sneeze. I freaked out when I realized
that snot just came out of my vagina. Who am I gonna call? Ghostbusters!
Instead I called a friend who calmly explained to me that I was having back
labor pains and that she will be there shortly to take me to the hospital. At
that moment I became more terrified than I ever have been before in my life. I
was more afraid of what was to come than childbirth itself. My god, what have I
created? What will I do with this newborn stranger? Why can’t I just have Aids
instead so that I can just die? With these panicking thoughts, sheepishly I
went to wake Megan who was overly enthusiastic about this situation. Her
excitement invaded and mixed with my fears.
On the way to the hospital, I sat
in the backseat of the car and belted out my favorite 80s songs while rocking
my body back and forth trying to keep the back pains, the excitement, and the
fear at bay. I became too insane to realize my own insanity. I became too
enrage with the pain. I stubbornly lay on my side arguing with the nurses that
my back was killing me and only would lie on my back to allow the nurses to see
the places where the sun does not shine. “Did your water break,” asked one
nurse. I didn’t know. What if it did, and I didn’t noticed because I was
sitting in the tub freaking over floating pussy snot! “Can’t you wait until my
back stop hurting for a few minutes before you stab my hand with the IV,” I
screamed. “No, your contractions are coming too fast,” replied the demon
sadistically doing her job. Megan started singing attempting to make me feel
better. Her brilliant idea was the wrong move. She became the focus of my
anger, and I threatened to get up and slap her if she did not leave the room.
She left and would unintentionally get me back by calling my family members.
As a nurse entered my room, all
hell broke loose and flooded the gurney. Wide-eyed and loss for abusive words,
I turned on my back. The nurse peeked underneath my soaked gown and then looked
back at me with wide eyes. She hurriedly called out to the others. “Don’t
push,” I was told while they wheeled me into the cold, sterilized room. As I
struggled to not push the groundhog out of my hole, a masked man stepped into
the bright lights and said, “let us know when.” I didn’t know when, but my body
with a mind of it own did all the shoving. There was no doubt in my mind that
my groundhog has manly shoulders when I felt my vagina being torn apart enough
to need three stitches and many kegel exercises. Thankfully the groundhog didn’t see her shadow.
While I lay exhausted in the waste
that was emptied out of my body, I watched three nurses surrounding and
cleaning up my groundhog to the side. They started to giggle. One of the nurses
turned toward me and explained that my groundhog had her first bowel movement.
Is this an omen? As the doctor continued to reach inside me and pull out the
rest of the afterbirth, I slowly emerge out of my shock. I became very cold and
felt like I was being fingered by Freddy Krueger. I found my voice and asked
the doctor to take his hand out of my pussy and give me a blanket. The epidural
that I signed for still remains missing to this day.
I woke up with the nurse bringing me this tiny
groundhog with eggshell-colored skin, dark curly hair, bluish gray eyes, and a
wide button nose to breastfeed. At that moment I felt that she was the most
beautiful thing in this world. She was too beautiful to be my child. I named my
precious groundhog Oasis Colleen. Right now, I am too blinded by emotions. The
ending of this story is told with my tears, runny nose, and blubbering.
