Trying to sidle my way into an intuitive relationship with the forces of nature that start uteri contracting I decided that W would call us between 3 and 7 that day. At 7:30 exactly, the universe winked and nudged me reassuringly and the phone rang.

I think one of the things I love most about attending a birth is that absolutely impossible moment when the will of the woman reaches its threshold. When she meets the ultimate physical certainty that the bones and meat and sinews of her body will not stretch any further and there is nothing that will separate a space for another life to fit through hers. When her face is deep in the agony of struggle with a physical body attempting an unworldly act.

Because it is in this moment that the act of Life occurs. It comes from nowhere and nothingness and yet is everything truly beautiful about the world.

Birth is the meeting place of normal, impossible.

Loving arms wrapped around and over the swollen brown belly -
Reaching down through the water and into the newest space in the universe -

“Hello Simon”

Daddy, and water, and his mother’s blood roaring past his ears.

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