The circle of life

There are a lot of things that medical students get to see and do that regular people don't.

Since July, I've seen hearts beating, intestines wiggling, lungs expanding and contracting and livers just kind of hanging out. (The liver is not such an exciting organ.) I've seen a wife crying as her husband is wheeled back to emergency surgery, a woman's beautifully painted toes right before we amputated her charred-black feet and a son tearfully apologizing to his parents after endangering his life in a motorcycle accident.

All of those are nice, of course, but you could probably see any of them on Discovery Health or in a Lifetime movie-I mean, if that's the type of thing you're into.

Anyway, the only thing that I've done that you really have to be a doctor or a med student (or a midwife, or the guy who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night) to truly experience is delivering a baby. And since most of you will never have the experience of catching a baby, I thought I'd present a how-to guide.

The first thing you should know is that catching a baby doesn't start when the baby's head comes out. No, it starts up to a day or two beforehand, when you plant the seeds of baby-catching.

Understandably, most women don't want a medical student waltzing into their room when they're naked from the waist down, lying on their back, sweating and in pain with a baby's head about to come out of their vaginas. I mean, when I have my own first child, I probably won't mind, but I'm a boy, so I don't really count.

So as a medical student, what you do is walk into the room and do what we doctors call "forming a doctor-patient relationship." This is a complex process that involves saying, "Hi, my name is Alex. I'm a medical student helping out the doctors. Do you mind if I'm here for the birth?"

Because pregnant women are not, contrary to popular belief, only slightly less scary than wishing Mel Gibson a good fast on Yom Kippur, they usually say, "Yes." (Pregnant women are only slightly scarier than normal women, mostly because they have a baby inside of them.) If you bring the pregnant woman a ginger ale, you've basically surpassed the father of the baby as her favorite man.

Catching a baby is less like playing catcher in baseball and more like receiving the center snap in football.

Step one: Resist the urge to pull on a helmet and start barking out, "Blue Forty-Two! Blue Forty-Two! Hut! Hut!"

Step two: Put the heels of your hands together and poise your hands at the opening of the vagina.

Step three: In the downtime between pushes, wonder whether you're supposed to be looking at the vagina or the woman's face; come to no conclusion.

Step four: Here comes the baby's head! Grab it!

Step five: The baby's head comes out, followed closely by the body. It's coming faster than you think it will.

Step six: Pick the baby up off the floor and dust it off. (Kidding!)

Step seven: Take a good look at the baby's genitals; babies are born with very swollen labia/scrotums, and there's nothing more embarrassing than telling mom that her little Josephine is really a Joseph.

Step eight: Give the baby to Mom, and tell Dad that he can cut the cord if he has revived himself after passing out.

And that's really all there is to it!

(Optional step nine: Pick the baby up by its armpits and start singing the opening song from The Lion King. Bonus points if you have med school classmates back you up on the vocals while dressed as giraffes and elephants.)

Alex Fanaroff, Trinity '07, is a second-year medical student. His column runs every other Thursday.