The Other Side of the World

Came across her breastfeeding

. . . the fetus (from the fetus & pelvis educational model)

or maybe she’s just practicing for a lotus birth?

Allegedly mid-winter break here, and while the rain obliges with making obvious the ‘winter’ part via interminable sheets of dry-laundry-obscuring proportions, the babies are heedless to the ‘break’ portion and continue to fill my hands with warm, squelching newness.

and no, I am not reading some last-minute how-to guide on baby-catching - merely checking over my documentation amidst our homebirth supplies

Latest baby born framed by the sunny noon pouring in the living room picture window after pivoting ever-so-delicately right at the nth hour (literally - we watched her sweet dark haired head turning at the entrance) into a lovely anterior (facing down) position.
With the most gentle and concentrated of efforts - born with absolute slow serenity into my hands - mama lost in the deepness of birthing, papa quietly holding us all up off the floor in his arms - mother, child, midwife (ry student - for just a few more months).

Really, considering the amount of rain outside, and the extra effort New Zealanders make to heat their homes once a new baby is arriving - it’s a very good thing being a midwife, mid-winter.

Serious reading - bonus points if anyone recognizes the book

It’s much better to use the diaper on cat than to have it on yourself. . .

she sits in her favourite corner and plots entropy

and sometimes recruits for cleaning it all up

while I study, enkaftan’d & cozily

in other words -

mostly, the chaos?

it reigns.

There are some women that you just cannot wait to see in labour -
When the phone rang at 2:10 am I was so thrilled, I practically floated (speedily) out of bed and found myself shivering with delighted anticipation as I brushed my teeth in the ice-cold, eerie-quiet bathroom.

In the narrow back room, heaters glowed dim light off the bare-board walls and seeped warmth into the hanging sheaths of red and blue fabric as we sat ringed - 4 women; mother, midwife, friend, me - around the quiet expanse of birth pool, paying homage to the new motherhood unfolding within.

In the quietest, pale hours of the morning we all found ourselves weary and doubting. Having assessed her myself, I hoped fevrently that no aspect of my ego had prevented me from getting a second opinion that might cast a differing light on the situation. As it was - we were all caught in those long breathless hours of birth. The time when hope is thin - hope that a woman’s strength will last, hope that we have encouraged her rightly, hope that the slippery, sweet baby will meld it’s right way through the dark tightness of being born. And most of all, hope that the seeming impossiblity of making way for a whole other being will be triumphed over.

When her wise-eyed and calm mother quietly pulled me aside to ask “will this be alright?” I found myself suddenly struggling under an enormous weight of trust and responsibility. How can I say yes? or no? or even more difficult - ‘I do not know’. Waves of humility washed over me as I looked back into her quiet, dark face and said ‘there’s nothing that makes me think otherwise right now’.

My preceptor tells me that practicing good, true midwifery makes one wise. And while I do not profess wisdom, merely the hope of it, I do believe that I have learnt, or discovered in some small way how to hold the birth space still and let the unbelieveable occur.

I procured a spoonful of honey to slip between labouring, exhausted teeth, I crouched down low - to the brim of the water - and held her eyes firmly in mine and told her she was ok, her body was strong, we would not leave her, we would be right along side her as she plunged into the lonely, fierce power that pushes a baby out.

An hour later, she held her hands to an underwater head - lifted them apart as if in supplication to the universe and then raised her incredible baby back towards her heart. For a moment I glanced away from my work to bask in the glow on her new-mama face.

crazy, beautiful.

I don’t care if the sun don’t shine
I get my lovin’ in the evening time -
When I’m with my baby

I mean, really, really, how could you not want to take that warm, cuddly thing to bed with you?
I for one, am not about to deprive myself of the pleasure!

It’s some kind of alchemic ecstacy that you can actually make marshmallows.
Or at least a lot of delightfully green Easter goodness.
As many children and giddy adults as possible to fit into one kitchen is a necessary prerequisite, of course.
Weekends off. . . ahhh
sweet & mellow indeed

I’d been hoping, lately, for a birth that began in the evening (or rather a labour that began in the evening, as these things often seem to occur in tandem, no?) so that I wouldn’t have to wake up in the middle of the night. No real reason - please understand that I wouldn’t know an uninterrupted night of sleep if it hit me in the face, and that’s just fine with my physiology. Nevertheless, when I was at the last (unexpected) visit of the day I was quite pleased to be interrupted by a call on my cell from another preceptor midwife letting me know our definitely ready client was making her way into town.

I went home, enjoyed the dinner that was waiting for me on the table & had a cup of tea with my preceptor & my other preceptor (in case you’re wondering - I presently have 3, and yes, it is a logistical challenge). It was a slow, crusising beginning to a slow, not-that-cruising night. As we left, the midwife said to the LD - “we should be home by midnight!”. The neccessary famous last words and all that. . .

Lately the universe has been trying to teach me a lesson about subsequent births- a lesson I am slightly irritated with, and yet, coming to accept. Sometimes, second babies come slower, harder, more heart-wrenchingly difficult. Darn.
It is, however, all part of the larger lesson in not making rules about birth. Or; go ahead and make them if you enjoy watching them be shredded into humbling little fragments of meaninglessness about 3 seconds later.

Suffice to say, in the grand tradition of the mysteries of baby & pelvis, this particular boy decided to rotate the long way around from LOL to ROA. L as in left, as in, could have just turned slightly more left and been out with it. In true midwifery art & craft though, we observed the subtle signs of progress more than the opening of the cervix and expulsion of the baby. Gradually, steadily, we observed the head turn and shift and position itself just right. With patience that bordered on breath-holding we supported and cajoled the process along, once or twice stopping to re-examine the path, and make sure we weren’t too far out into the fragile land of needing intervention.

It’s a hard call to make, and one that I’m glad I’m not doing on my own (quite yet) - rubbing up on the border of do-we-need-to-help-more? beyond-supportive-midwifery-more? It pushes you to examine your beliefs, your ethics and duty, your responsibility and the enormity of one woman’s birth experience - all this against a backdrop of exhaustion, intense emotions, and of course - pain. Do we hold the space steadfast so that the woman can claim her own victory? Or is this one of those times the cavalry really might be needed? And furthermore, how can we know what the woman will reflectively determine she wanted?

In the end, with vast sums of trust and love we carried on being midwives; being with her, using our midwifery skills quietly through the long night. And for the very first time I felt the strange and intoxicating sensation of bones, creasing and overlapping under my fingers as a head slid past the rim of cervix I held back for a very exhausted mama.

Over 9 pounds of soft, moulded head over an intact perineum. And relief that washed over us all - relaxing at last; my shoulders that would ache all the next day from the tension. Washing us all clean and honoured, like the deluge of tears running down his father’s nose.

note to self: hard to update blog when ‘free time’ mainly consists of getting to shove food in your mouth, your breast in someone else’s mouth, or even more elusively; sleep sweet sleep.

Today:

6:45 - Woke up to alarm and bewildering mass of long limbs skirmishing all over the bed until he realized the early one was set for me and not him.

7:00 - dressed and cleaned, I found hardware that lets me access the hospital with a modicum of legitimacy (student badge, security swipe card). Shoved dried apricot into mouth in order to be able to claim I “ate breakfast” should anyone ask. Shoved more apricots into handbag in case the un-hungry feeling present before daylight hours should later pass.

7:10 - knocked on my (former) preceptor’s door because her car was blocking mine in the driveway. Felt relieved she’s a midwife and exceptionally good and waking up quickly and following instructions half asleep

7:15 - zoomed over to the hospital in my newly new-batteried, otherwise decrepit car

7:30 - arrived at Day of Surgery Admissions, whipped past the full waiting room by flashing my pathetic credentials at the receptionist, only to stand awkwardly in the hallway with gowned people whizzing by importantly because my preceptor wasn’t there yet.

7:38 - left again to try and find cell phone coverage to text preceptor in case I was in the wrong Day of Surgery????

7:40 - bumped into her in the hallway before I could press send. She was late (for one of those myriad of legitimate midwifery reasons. like bleeding clients). Whew!

8:00 - pre-op bleh blah blih - got into scrubs, checked the fetal heart (stroppy as could be), watched the doctors go through the consent forms. Hung out with the mama and her husband, distracting her with talk of. . . who can remember now? Babies, I suspect.

8:30 - followed the wheeling entourage into the operating theatre. Scrubbed in while the spinal anaesthetic needled its long way into one hunched over back. Momentarily enjoyed having my surgical gown tied up for me and the very nice little blue cotton towels (one for each hand) you dry off with. Easily amused, yes.

8:40 - tried not to faint while standing still at the foot of the operating table while scar tissue of previous sections was delicately picked through - no not the ‘gore’, please, some credit here. . . just the lone apricot taunting my blood sugar.

9:05 - Clear amniotic fluid suctioned out of a raw rip, and then, without any warning to him or I, a small, squalling boy dragged suddenly into the humming air. Held up to an astonished dad and then deposited neatly into the receiving blanket in my outstretched arms. Not my usual catch, but still stunning in strange and beautiful way. I clutched the sudden mass of warmth to my chest and stepped over to the resuscitare to place him gently down.

9:06 vigourous rubbing by the pediatrician and I (under his instructions I was assigned the hands and feet) and a shower of kidney-functioning proof. Quick check, weigh, squall, the perfunctory examination of the brand new. I held his exquisite soft head in the cup of my palm and crooned - out of place, and  perfectly appropriate.

I got home after 6:00pm that day - the rest of it spent roaring all over the big, wide, windy countryside visiting other women in their child-bearing year.
Home, dinner, breast, breast, breast, bed.

And still, that perfectly round soft head, memory-pressed into just part of my hand; a section.

It took us from August to patiently piece together the story from her first birth.
By February she was ripe and rounding each silhouette she made with the big boned baby of her anxious husband. And the details of hard, narrow, high, beds, obstetricians gruesomely over-busy, random injections, separation down a long concrete corridor (but I could hear her screaming still, through all that concrete!) and a healthy baby whisked away for an age from a distraught newborn mama. . . well we promised ourselves, surely, with all our hearts, we could hold the space on a better experience.

So, as we do for all our clients - we told her over and over that she was strong, that her body was wise beyond our capacity, that she could bring this baby into her small, delicious-smelling home with all the love and care of two very committed attendants.
Also we ate a lot of that delicious smelling food. Best lunch in town.

Then with the grey breaking of night, we met her in the safe nest she had created upon her bed. Held her and stroked her as she pleaded and demanded of us. Reassured and sat with her. And in the later hours, laughingly proffered her daughter’s lollipop to her for a much needed, much sweeter infusion of energy.

Bringing forth, shortly and with great exertion (and noise - but only one wall’s worth) - a large, calm boy, who immediately consented to the breast he was pressed joyfully against.

I won’t tell you how she thanked us, because I’m not sure I can convey the emotion of it in her english - but it was the most beautiful & heartfelt english I’ve heard spoken. And also the most words, at once, heard from her.

Suffice to say, I was so proud to be part of the difference.

~ in case you’re wondering, I’m drawing up a syringe of 0.2 ml oral vitamin K  for the baby