The hospitals’ measures against contamination also included an iron rule: nobody allowed in, except medical staff, and no personal possessions were allowed into maternity wards. That meant no fathers, no friends – and no underwear.
Imagine the new mothers, happily waddling around the ward in their shapeless hospital gowns, glowing with their new status and squeezing those rags between their legs!
I was one of those happy young mothers. After my son’s birth, I spent four days in the ward, chatting with my roommates, eagerly listening to the second-timers talk about the rewards and complications of motherhood, breastfeeding my tiny son, and standing in line to the “rag-exchange den.”
To avoid long lines, every room in the ward had been assigned a time slot in which to exchange their rags. “Tante Natalia” ruled with an iron fist, maintaining our schedule rigorously.
When I first saw her, Natalia’s appearance shocked me. Her uncombed greasy hair stuck out from under her white medical hat. Suspicious gray deposits marred the undersides of her rugged nails. Her red, potato-shaped nose, shot with purple capillaries, hung below dull, flat eyes. Her hands didn’t look clean either, yet she distributed “sterilized” rags to all of us.
The first day I went to exchange my rags, I witnessed Tante Natalia scolding a young mother, who dared to ask for an additional rag. Reveling in her power over us, Natalia prattled about thriftiness and proletarian pride. Then she demonstrated how to refold a bloody rag so it could be applied a couple more times. When she was done, she thrust the refolded rag back at the girl who fled in tears. Her roommates later told me that they shared their spare rags with her until morning when she could venture back to the den for her daily allotment.
COMMENTS (0)
RATE THIS STORY
