Chapter - 4 - Power...

     He said that he loved her and wanted to get married, but when she got pregnant, he disappeared and never returned. At first she was upset, but then she said she was done weeping, and made a conscious decision to "be happy for the sake of the baby". Many people were single parents. She could do this…
     It was the 4^th of July weekend when her contractions started. She lived an hour and a half away so decided to rent a nearby motel room where she could labor until she was ready to go to the hospital.
     When I entered the motel room she was laying on the bed as stiff as a plank, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Her parents were visiting from Long Island and had rented the room next to her. Their voices were loud and their worried concerns penetrated the thin walls. She jammed a pillow in her mouth so they would not hear her.
     The contractions were coming steadily every three minutes and felt strong to my touch, yet when I examined her, I was surprised to find that her cervix had not opened—it was closed tight like it had been sewed shut with baling wire. If her breath could find its voice, I thought, it would take the tension off the cervix—but I could see that she was too inhibited with her parents next door to let that happen.
     I looked into her wild, scared eyes and said without hesitation, "Let’s blow this place." She pointed to the wall, and frantically nodded yes. I pulled my car up, ran next door to explain to her parents that we were just going to the hospital so she could be more comfortable, and in the three minute interval between contractions, loaded her into the car…"Hi mom, dad…I’m just fine…I’ll call you…Gotta go…Bye"…And then, BAM, the next one hit, and her head took a bite out of the pillow.
     When we arrived at the birthing room in the hospital, I said, "This room is sound proof. How cool is that." "Sound proof? Really?" she gasped. "Honest", I lied.
     The next contraction came and she grabbed both of my arms, yanked me across the twin bed, opened her mouth wide and began to roar at the top of her lungs in my face. She not only sounded like a lion, she looked like one! She roared and snarled and I thought my heart would stop. When the contraction stopped she collapsed on the bed and I staggered back trying to catch my breath—until…the next contraction, and again…she grabbed me and began to roar. It went on and on like this, her face contorted—nine months of rage spewing in my face. "That son of a bitch left me..."
     There was a knock at the door. "What?" I said with a little irritation. I did not like people coming in and disturbing women in labor. The nurse was crazed. "Every patient in this hospital is awake and thinks there is a mountain lion loose in the halls. What in the hell is going on in there?" "Uh…I see. Well, we’re good really. Things are pretty good, moving along. Hear how the pitch of her voice is dropping? She should be ready to push any time now." I gently closed the door leaving her frustrated and bewildered and returned to my patient.
     As the labor progressed, her face relaxed, and her breath became soft and sensual, like the earth itself was breathing. ‘Come out, little one. I’m ready," she whispered.
     She gently massaged her perineum and slowly delivered the baby’s head into her hands. As the shoulders eased out, she lifted the baby to her breast. She became utterly absorbed. Gently she caressed her new daughter, singing her a soft lullaby,
     As I sat on the end of her bed, watching the timeless union of mother and child, I realized that she had taught me how it’s possible to transform rage into power, a power so magnificent, so sublime, so primal—a woman could transcend the frailty of her human limitations and experience, and push consciousness out of her body into a field of exquisite tenderness and unbounded love.

Chapter 3 – It’s not enough…

     Help me…please, you gotta do something…help me. She looked at her husband. Her eyes wide, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her face begging.
     Baby, I’m helping, I am. We’re doing it. We got it now. I’m right here, helping. Are you ready? We’re going to ride this next one, baby. Hang on. Here we go.

     It was 3:00 in the morning and we were all crammed into a birth room together at the hospital—the staff midwife and me, family members and friends.

     She was tired. It had been a long labor, but she was nearly there. The contractions were sweeping over her, like giant breakers battering the shore, relentless, one piled on top of another.

     They were spooned together on the bed. She was naked, and he was in sweat pants, shirtless. His arms wrapped around her body, rocking her like a little child to the rhythm of her deep breathing and soft moaning. He was intensely present, drawing her into his body with each wave. His voice was melodic and steady as he supported her through each contraction.

     In the corner on the floor, two friends sat, fellow jazz musicians, composing a new score to the rhythm of the baby’s heart beat… ta dah, ta dah, ta dah ta dah…one hundred and thirty beats a minute…ta dah, ta dah, ta dah…snapping their fingers, creating a song to welcome this child into the world…an offering. On the edge of the couch sat the grandparents, calmly taking it all in. Maintaining vigilance, their breathing in rhythm with their daughter’s, but quiet.

     Contraction after contraction…Help me…I’m here, baby. I will never leave you…Help me, please help me…Just one more, baby, here we go. We’ll do it together…Sweat dripping from their bodies…

      Suddenly she got up. While a nurse helped her to the bathroom, her husband sat up on the side of the bed, head in his hands. Then he walked over to me, tears welling in his eyes. Standing there he said, “That’s all I’ve got…and it’s not enough…” This loving and gentle husband, in one sentence, gave me a profound glimpse of what it must be like for these men, such devoted protectors, who choose to enter into the mysterious world of women and birth. 

     And now, when she began to bear down, he cradled her in the bed by making a nest of his body that she could curl up in. As she pushed, so did he. He roared when she roared. They moved and breathed as one organism.

     As the baby slipped into the world, the room exploded in a joyful celebration. Birthday melodies welcomed the new one, serenaded from faces soaked in tears. “We did it, baby! We did it!” he shouted. 

Chapter 2 — The long way home…

       It took seventeen years to find my way back. After graduation I thought for sure I would head straight to the Frontier School of Midwifery to ride horses into the backwaters of Kentucky and deliver babies. Instead I became a hippie in San Francisco, and worked in the operating room of a major hospital, becoming intimate with the heart-breaking traumas of the city.     

     Then…marriage…rural living off the grid…crewing on sail boats through the South Pacific…jungle nursing on the island of Bougainville in the territory of Papua New Guinea—doing things I was not qualified to do, but did them anyway because there was no doctor there.

      Our daughter was conceived on that island, and we returned to the mountains of Northern California to be parents. Chickens, gardens, pigs, and a toddler on a small plot of land in the woods…

     When she was three years old we moved to Fresno for two years so my husband could go back to college. Yet, again, I found myself working in another operating room in a big hospital. Now, you can’t get any further away from midwifery than working in an operating room. Brains, and bones, and guts, stainless steel, green scrubs and zero humanity. It was stressful and I hated it. What the hell am I doing here, I would ask myself. This is not who I am.

     I stayed with it because it paid the bills, and I was sure we would move back to the mountains when he graduated, and all would make sense again, or so I thought.

     However, he accepted a job with the Forest Service at a station that was located in a rice growing community in a valley in California, and the ”forest”? Well… it was a days drive away. My husband was gone from Monday through Friday, and my daughter and I were left alone in this God forsaken place, where the mosquitoes were as big as sparrows, and crop dusters flew continually overhead, dropping poison on the rice paddies and the town.

     I entered a period of great loneliness. Sometimes I would hide in the laundry room so I wouldn’t infect my family with my sadness. I felt so terrible in my head, that one day, I actually went to a doctor and asked him to x-ray my brain, or do an EEG, because I knew that to feel like this, there had to be something seriously wrong with me. They didn’t know much about depression in those days, so he did an EEG and said my brain was fine, and recommended vitamins. Well, I can tell you that this was a defining moment…

     I struggled. I knew I had to get a grip on my life. I found a part time job working in labor and delivery in the little local hospital, and learned how to teach childbirth classes in the community. Slowly, I realized that I could breathe once more.

     Sitting at the bedsides of women again, and teaching the mysteries and wonder of birth to pregnant couples, I started to come back into alignment with myself. The depression began to lift, and I felt whole again. I was finally living my truth. 

     At that time I heard that a pilot program in midwifery had opened up at the University of California in San Francisco, and they were going to take three students. Someone suggested I apply. I was incredulous. “You can’t be serious. I’m nobody, living no where, doing not much.” What would I tell them? “I don’t have much experience, but I’m sure I was a midwife in a past life, so you should just choose me right now so I can get on with it!”

     But figuring, what did I have to lose, I applied along with two hundred other women. At the interview I don’t remember much of what I said, but I do know I spoke about my yearning to serve women and their families. I confessed that I didn’t know too much, but what I did know was that I had a “”knowing” that I trusted, and that I knew I could do this.

     When I got home, I had a feeling…This woman and I had profoundly connected. The interview was deeply personal, and we spoke from our hearts, each of us feeling seen and heard.

     Weeks later, when I was accepted, the news felt gentle and soft… like, of course…it is my time. Sometimes a seed will tremble in us, wanting to germinate. It takes patience, waiting for the right amount of water and warmth, but eventually it will happen. It took seventeen years, but I was finally coming home.

    

     

Chapter 1 - When I First Knew...

        I could have gone home. It was the end of my shift and I had the weekend off. But she had absolutely no one, and I could not leave her, so I stayed. It was 1963. I was a student nurse in San Francisco and just beginning my obstetrical training when Margaret was admitted to Labor and Delivery. She was five days away from her due date, and at her prenatal visit the day before, the doctor was unable to hear the baby's heart beat. After further examination, it became tragically clear that her baby had died in the womb. 

     I was but nineteen, and she was forty-two. There we were, two women—an hour ago strangers— sitting together in the dim light of a hospital room, waiting for the doctor to come in to induce her labor so her dead baby could be born. 

     In the quiet of the evening, tearfully clutching my hand, she asked if I would remain by her side, bear witness to her story and her pain. She talked and she wept. I listened and my heart ached.

     She had lived her entire life on her family's dry, dusty farm in Oklahoma.  Never ventured very far, never had a date, never been in love, never known warmth and tenderness other than her secret yearnings that were always unrequited. 

     Then one hot day in July...a salesman came by the farm, and that night she "got laid and subsequently pregnant" in a haystack in their old barn. In the morning he had slipped away, and just like that, in one night, her life, as she had known it, was over.

     She hid her pregnancy as long as she could, but after five months, and after contacting an adoption agency, she moved to San Francisco. There she rented a room in a boarding house to wait out her pregnancy.

     She told me that for the first time in many years, she was happy, deeply happy, and she felt that her life, in the bearing of this life, finally had purpose.  She shared with me that, as the baby grew bigger and more vigorous, she had delighted in its movements within her body. Her heart had mushed opened, and all the love she was capable of poured into the child. She sewed baby clothes, and knitted baby blankets and sweaters. She spent long days walking and singing old childhood songs to the baby.

     Throughout these months her intention had been to still go through with the adoption. However, two weeks ago she said she realized that this would not be possible. She couldn't give this baby away. This child was her child. In her heart they were one piece.

     And now... here she was...waiting in a hospital bed to give birth to this very child who was no longer alive. What she would be facing in these coming hours was inconceivable to me.

     The doctor came and went. Hooked her up to the IV where pitocin dripped into her body and induced the labor that would squeeze this child from her womb. 

      As wave after wave of contractions ripped through her body, she moaned and writhed and wailed. I embraced her in my arms, whispered words of encouragement in her ear, and wiped away her tears and sweat. We entered together into the dance of birth.

It was gradual and gentle, but slowly I realized that I had done this before, that I knew what to do. As the hours passed, I remembered more and more—the wild, powerful movements of a woman’s body, the primal sounds that ushered from her throat, her stunning strength and courage. I was completely calm and present in the face of such power. This was the essential truth of birth and it was as familiar to me as my own name.

      As the sun rose the next day, Margaret pushed a little boy from her body. He was beautiful and perfect, except he did not breathe. There was no cry. She took him in her arms and kissed and caressed his little body. She cried and she grieved. She held him for a long time, and then, when her tears had stopped flowing, she asked to dress him. With all the tenderness of a new mother she put on him the clothes she had made, wrapping him up in a soft, knitted blanket. Only then could she let him go.

      She fell into a deep sleep, and I continued to sit by her side, feeling somehow that I still needed to watch over her. When she woke we held each other. There was no need for words. There was nothing left unspoken or unfelt. We were two women who came together for one sacred night and did what we needed to do. She did the work and I accompanied her.

      I knew then that my destiny was to become a midwife. I felt like I was being summoned back into the service of women… It’s like that for midwives. It’s a profession that one is called to, born into. It was like that for me on this night long ago.