The Small Things

Sometimes, it's the small things that make your day.

Today, I was moved when my patient gave me the gift of chocolate to celebrate the birth of her son. The choclate was wrapped in light blue foil, one was a square piece with a picture of baby boy and the other was cigar-shpaed piece. My first patient gift.

As I was walking be her room, her mother greeted with me a hug.

"Eisha, it is so good to see you. You need to come and see the baby." she said.

I walked into the room and was instantly greeted by the patient, who looked up at me with relief and joy.

"He is big. 9 lbs and 11 ounces. My pelvis was just not big enough for his big body. So, we had a C-section. It was not what I had expected, but he just was not coming. Oh well, it was worth it."

She smiled as she looked at her son with his chubby face and full lips. He looked just like his dad. He was sucking on his fingers and sleeping quietly.

***


Over the course of the three weeks I spent on labor and delivery, I got to know the patient and her family very well. This twenty-something year-old,, first time mother, had recently moved to SF from the South. She retained her southern accent and her mother maintained a certain amount of Southern hospitality. The patient always wore her straight black hair down. Her face was framed by thick-rimmed glasses. She was friendly and seemed to always be concerned.

She had become my longitudinal patient. She always came with her mother. I had seen them regularly in triage, where she came concerned about contractions that the she thought were the harbingers of labor. Each time she came in, we would connect the monitor and reassure her that she was not in labor.

She returned in the days leading up to her delivery due to concerns that she was not feeling her baby move. There were also some non-reassuring changes noted in her fetal heart strip. For some reason, when she showed up to triage, everything returned to normal.

"He makes a liar out of me," she would say, right before we let her go home.

On her last triage visit, she realized she was not in labor. She was close to her due date, so we decided to induce her labor. We all knew that if we discharged her, she would be back soon enough.

***

I gave her hug and made my way to the crib. I was finally getting to meet the baby we had been monitoring with ultrasounds, fetal heart monitoring, and cervical exams over the last three weeks. I had come to know his 2-d black and white ultrasound image, as well as the amniotic fluid levels that bathed him in his in-utero home. He had been a constant source of worry for his mom. Now, he had entered our world. And it was such a pleasure to see his face and his little hands.

Over three weeks, I felt like I had really become a part of my patient's life. In her room, I was surrounded by strangers, who had come to know me.

It these small things that make it all worth it.