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.