Marked

People have a way of marking you. Little people—tiny little newborn people, especially—are particularly adept at it. They mark you in a way that you may or may not realize. Sometimes they create a memory so powerful that you can vividly replay it in your mind for the rest of your life. Other times you may not even realize they marked you at all, or at least you don’t realize that you were marked by that particular instant.

I attended my first OB clinical last week. I held tiny little babies, less than an hour old. I watched a father hold his newborn daughter for the first time, and as the tears rolled freely off of his face, his three-year-old son reached up to pat his new sister on the head, whispering, “Hello. It’s nice to meet you.”

Marked.

The littlest baby by the door kept crying. It’s not a bad thing for a newborn to do. Screaming helps the lungs develop and can help clear a gunky airway. So it’s not a bad thing. But I’ll never be good at the “cry it out” method. So I put on a pair of gloves. His arms were waving around wildly. I slipped a finger into his hand, and he clung to it. His little fingers couldn’t even wrap all the way around it. Another finger caressed his cheek, and he rooted toward it. I stroked the roof of his mouth, and he latched on. Then he was quiet. So comfortably, peacefully quiet.

Marked.

It’s been a while since I’ve held a baby that small. Nearly 14 months. I thought about Jessie a lot that day. I thought about her when a nurse’s response to my question of what can be done to reduce risk of infection when a likely HIV, HSV, or HPV positive mother gives birth in an area where detection or treatment of those disorders is limited was a clipped and cold, “Don’t bother. Move on to someone you can help.”  I thought about her when that baby took my finger. I thought about her when that dad looked at his daughter and tried to wrap his mortal mind around the weight of beauty in his arms. I thought about her every single time a baby cried. I thought about her when one of those newborns scratched me with his little claws, because I had forgotten about Jessie’s fingernails, and about how cutting them was so unbelievably nerve-wracking.

I didn’t know that I had been marked by that. By little baby fingernails.

Sometimes even plastic little people can mark you.  In lab the other day, one of the baby mannequins had on a hat. Just a generic little hospital baby hat.


But I’ve seen that hat before.


So I stood there, frozen, in the middle of a lab class surrounded by my classmates, unable to move or catch my breath or even see clearly, because I have been marked by a little pink and blue knit cotton hat.

OB is a foreign land to me. On the normal med-surg postpartum floor that I was on, no one was sick. There were few if any complications. It’s not an area of nursing that I’m attracted to—not that I want people to be sick, just that I recognize that people will be. I want to be there to help when they are. I was so very thankful that the babies I worked with that day didn’t have a myriad of tubes and wires running off of them. I was thankful that they didn’t have IVs running into their fragile little veins, threatening to burst them. Because I’ve been marked by that too.



I think Marked is a good thing.  It could be bad, I suppose—if one let it be a distraction rather than a motivation; a token of fear instead of the foundation of courage; a definition when it should be a memory and quiet reminder.  But Marked can be good. Marked reminds you what you’re fighting for. It demands and allows more determined passion than you originally thought possible. It is both a symptom and a catalyst of love, both a cursed and blessed ability of the human spirit.

I have been marked.


I pray you are too.