Bebe moviendo?

For as long as I can remember, I have always been a bit preoccupied with boys. In kindergarten, I spent recess the way most five-year-olds do—chasing boys around the playground. In junior high I daydreamed about making out all day with Leonardo DiCaprio. I’m sure my grades would have been better in college had I not been obsessing over the hottie of the week. So you can imagine how strange it was to find myself standing in a room with two gloved fingers inside a forty year old woman’s vagina.

“So, now I want you to appreciate the cervix. It will feel like a rubbery cork. Is she fingertip?”

“Excuse me?” I sputtered.

“Is she dilated? Can you fit a fingertip inside the cervical canal.”

“Oh, um…I’m not sure…no.” I was beginning to feel very warm and lightheaded. My attending then began a monologue about some obstetric topic while my two fingers were still in the patient. Why did I have to stand here like this while he waxed on? Mercifully, he stopped talking and I finished the exam. And so began my experience as a student physician of obstetrics and gynecology.

After the initial shock, the women’s exams have not been so bad. Two or three speculum exams, and it’s just another part of the body, no big D. In fact, most of my clinic days are spent performing check-ups on the antepartum, or pregnant, patients. I ask them how they’re feeling—“ready for this baby to come out”, if they have any pain—“yes, on my sides and back”, or swelling—“yes”, and if the baby is moving—“Bebe moviendo?” After asking these questions, I explain to the poor ladies that “these are normal feelings in pregnancy due to the physiological changes, and unfortunately there is nothing we can do to help!” I feel pretty inadequate explaining this to a woman who clearly knows more about pregnancy than I do, but do my best to seem sympathetic. I then measure the fundal height, which is a measurement of the belly, and I listen to the fetal heart rate with a type of ultrasound machine. "SWISHHH, SWISHHH, SWISHHH, SWISHHH, SWISHHH," one hundred and fifty swishes a minute; the most warm, reassuring sound. Suddenly, I forget about getting admonished by my attending, I'm no longer stressed out, or tired from working a thirty-two hour shift. For a brief moment, a blanket of calm settles in the room and the new mother and I smile at each other and just listen to that rhythmic swishing, the beating heart of a new life.