Not my drug of choice.

I was wheeled back into the small corner of the pre-op/post-op room, with my husband by my side. I held a pillow over my now-deflated abdomen, the incision sharp with pain, a tribute to 35 weeks of hope and worry that have now turned to a future of uncertainty.

"Are you having any pain?" asks the nurse. Of course I'm in pain. I now know what it must have been like to be the live fish I field dressed, cut open and gutted, while they flopped on the warm rocks next to the lake.

I tell the nurse that yes, my pain is bad and I would like a painkiller. She returns with a syringe and administers the drug into my IV. "Here is some morphine," she says. "This should help with the pain." Within a minute, the fierce assault on my severed nerves subsides to a mere annoyance. I lay back and speak with my mother and grandmother who have just come from the NICU where my little girl is now resting after making her debut.

They gush about how happy they are that I had a little girl, and she's such a cute thing, but so small, and they are going to go back down to the NICU to see her again.

The bed is being wheeled into the elevator. The incubator with the 3.9 pound sleeping baby is perched on top of the bed. The elevator doors close as the bed is halfway in and instead of stopping they keep going, tons of steel crushing the bed, the incubator, the baby. Nurses scream and try to stop the doors.

My husband goes with my mom and grandma to see our baby and the pain is back. It's only been 15 minutes. I tell the nurse and she gives me another dose of morphine. I've never had morphine before today, but I've also never been cut open from hip-to-hip either.

A nurse that was in the operating room comes out and puts a container on my bed filled with a brown substance. "It's your placenta," she says, as if I should already know this. "The doctor wants to examine it." Then it's time to go back to my room, so the nurses wheel me and my placenta into the elevator.

We board the elevator and the doors begin to close, but the nurse that was moving my IV has left it outside. He comes in, and the doors close on the tubes. The IV, it's outside, but it's still stuck in me, the elevators doors are closed now, the elevator begins it's descent as I watch the tubes stay still while we are going down and then the IV is tugging on my arm, I'm ripped off the bed, the IV is ripped out of my arm and I'm screaming as the blood runs out of my arm to pool on the floor and the nurses are just standing there.

Back in my private room I am lifted onto my air bed, which is usually reserved for ICU patients who are immobile. Coma patients, paraplegics, people in full-body casts usually get this bed. I guess pregnant women who are on bed rest get the bonus of a bed that shifts air around everytime you move, waking you up at night when you roll over. But it is comfortable and I'm grateful because I've been in that bed for the last 161 hours and I have 14 more to go.

"I hurt again," I tell the nurse. She says I have to eat before I can take my pain pill, but here's another shot of morphine. They are liberal with the morphine here.

I lay back and try to rest and think about the chicken dinner I should expect any minute now. The food in this hospital is amazing, better than most restaurants. I want to eat and take the pain pill and go to sleep. I have been up since 4 am, put on display like a circus freak for the interns, filleted, and pumped full of narcotics. I haven't held my baby yet, I can't feel my legs and I'm peeing into a bag. It hasn't been a good day.

I close my eyes and I'm in the NICU. My daughter is in her incubator, so small and helpless. A nurse walks up to check on her and trips. She falls into the incubator, which falls three feet to the floor. It hits the tile floor hard and my baby hits with equal force. Every nurse in the room runs to the shattered plastic box and the baby inside that isn't crying.

I wake with a start. It was just a bad dream. What is wrong with me? These thoughts, these horrible images, they keep coming. This isn't how a new mother is suppose to feel. I spend the next 10 hours in a state of unrest. There are more visions of accidents, and when I do sleep I have nightmares.

It has been over five years since that day. I have since looked up the side effects of morphine and learned that psychotomimetic actions are common with this drug. It would have been nice if the nurses had warned me before administering a narcotic known to induce delusions and dysphoria. The next time a nurse asks if I'd like some morphine, I will politely decline.