The Birth of My Groundhog

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.