It was as if there was a line and it ran from me to you

There is a feeling that happens when you're very scared and everything turns out okay. It's like all the fluid in your body rushes out through your belly button. All your tears, lymph, plasma, urine fall out of you onto the floor and you're amazed you can still walk after all that.

My right pant leg was covered in amniotic fluid and blood and shit and it was up my arms too because I'd just reached in there and pulled the baby out. God, when you know what's coming and that purple floppy body comes out, limbs askew and not breathing. Just like that, hands on her, rubbing rubbing rubbing until the cord is cut and she's getting breaths on the cart. I'm sitting there with D, telling her to talk to her baby, one eye on the cord between her legs, watching for the pooling blood, just trying to welcome the baby, just trying to call her back into her body.

Then we're okay and the baby's crying and then they're crying and then someone takes one look at me and says, go clean yourself up and come back.

So I take one step out the room and I'm crying too and just shaking with adrenaline, rinsing body fluids off of me, trying to wash 24 hours of labor off of me.

When I was so tired I couldn't stare into your eyes anymore, I let my body do what my heart had been doing all night, I just tried to hold you up. Bravery is when you're fighting so hard against every contraction, fighting so hard against letting your body open and your baby fill you, but you still choose to do it. This is the worst pain of your life and I'm trying to make it easier for you, trying to make it better for you. But I'm also trying to keep my mind fresh and not exhaust every resource I have because I have to think, okay, what if there's a resuscitation, what if there's a hemorrhage?

Fuck, what if there's both?

What the fuck is a good midwife anyway?

Then later we slip plastic tubing into her to give back the fluids which fell from her. Blood which came so dark, I wasn't sure at first where it was from, my hands on her uterus which was firm and yet still out it came, this slow, frightening trickle. And I was so tired, but still vigilant and when I looked between her legs again, more carefully this time, there it was, a ruptured vein. Slow dark venous blood on its leisurely return. Not like arterial blood, which I would have known right away, in such a hurry to make it to the extremities, instead pooling on the bed, but dark, like uterine blood, moon bleeding. Anyone could have missed it and we did check and she was so strong that I didn't see the exhaustion at first until I felt the horse hoof heart beat of her pulse.

Gave her fluids and I was on her, making sure she was eating, drinking big glasses of water, trying to blow prayers into each bite of burrito until she stabilized.

Now her baby is fat and her belly is thin and she's marrying him, the man who called her puta, who left those alarming bruises on her arms, that large round one on her thigh I didn't see till she was in labor. She says they still remember what we all talked about together, the day she came to my clinic crying.

But my friend told me that she heard her talking in the waiting room, as someone's granddaughter was suffering in labor. She said, "I was like her, I didn't think I could do it, but I did it, I really did it and if I can do it, she can do it too."

hunger and the turning into

You were so hungry, you said let's eat.

so I dipped in my hand

(blood)

letting in

the honey of our hearts.

Up to my elbows then

I asked you

how can I turn my hands into things that can hold?

Just long enough to reach your mouth

fast enough to move this sweetness

without spilling

I spun around quick like the wind

and you said

slowly

my love

do it slowly.

(here

we took the in-between spaces

made dreams from reality

in the morning--
made rain

You reached into my body

extending into the deepest part of me

one finger, two fingered

the bend of your knuckles

smoothed like the swell of

a mandolin ocean

           my spine

                    curved

                      and I felt

                 my own
     
           fertility

in the place the anatomy textbooks
called potential

like it wouldn't exist until it grew
a baby.

What's growing now isn't children

but a sweet awareness

of the divinity
               in my hips.

Birthing nothing but

a wet power
like dirt,

like the sea

     rocking in

          to your hands.

You are not my prisoner,

and therefore,

not mine to let go

still so,

still.

still

our movements

hold

the fine palpitations
of your heart

strong

your blood

your skin

strains against it

in delicacy

your pulse

rises

delicate

falls

delicate

across state lines,

indelicately,

my words crash against my lips.

Wish

I held my breath as long as I could

through the tunnel though the light was dim
ahead and I am not practiced at the art of

holding my breath and waiting.

It's okay if you can't handle it, but I really think you're doing a great job

There. Right there. Listening to the cavernous space inside of you. Waiting for the clicks and bumps of echolocation that confirm: everything's going to be alright.

These are the small moments that define us. From here on out, this moment will forever be before and then this other one, this will always be after. I am watching you change forever in front of me.

We didn't mean to be in this space together. Normally, this part comes later, hours later, after the work of breath and muscle has moved you into a place of transcendent, exhausted acceptance. Then, when you are ready to be opened, the change will come and it will be more than you had expected, but you will be ready. But not now and not like this. Right now, we are here and you are crying. I am keeping my face an unreadable mask. I am trying to hold back the creeping understanding inside of you, I am holding out for heartbeat. We didn't mean to be here together.

I try to learn to read the signs, reading your chart, that I might know better next time. But oh lord, let there be no next time. Let this be the last silent spring. Let all our visions of beautiful babies, blinking amniotic fluid from their eyelashes, staring up to the meet their mamas come true. Let me hear this heartbeat now.

There should a word for the sound of no heartbeat. Not merely an absence of noise, it is a silence that fills up this whole room. It is a palpable drop in temperature. We are moving very slowly while the air freezes around us. We are working in a dream, living out the scary things we hoped would never happen.We are living the aftermath of a sudden swell and learning that, sometimes you do everything right and it still goes all wrong.

Meanwhile the dogs bark, the trains groan, and another woman gives birth.

This place is characterized by overwhelming love and frustration.

Before I came here, I tried to find other people's stories of being here. I couldn't really find any. I found one blog that outlined with photos the beginning of the transition here and then abruptly stopped. I know now that it is not an easy thing to turn these experiences to words. Its grandness is difficult to comprehend unless you are in it. The importance of these small and gentle moments gets lost in translation. These, our routines of changing and being changed forever.

A baby is born and its your friend who is there to receive it. You see the elegance in her hands, the beauty flowing from her eyes and smile to the transcendent face of the woman birthing before her. The love and competence exuding from your friend who you remember from the first day here together, all wide eyed and first date lines. The bravery and resilience of the woman giving light to her baby, whose body is opening up like a miracle. Maybe her bag is intact and a crystal ball of membranes pushes out, all swirling amniotic fluid and new hair. Maybe it's ruptured and instead you see suture lines molding over each other, the crush of a little body built for this. The baby comes and the mom kisses and cries and receives her baby on her belly, her arms wrapped around it, hands released from the work of pushing to caress new skin. You tuck a white towel around the baby to prevent it from losing heat, a little pink striped hat on its little wet head. Everyone sits down to await the placenta.

And then it's 4am and you're scrubbing dirty laundry and maybe someone didn't do their fair share of list and you're tired, and you're frustrated about the nuts and bolts of how this clinic works or you're frustrated by the regulations of being a 21st century midwife in a learning clinic in a borderland city running on the in-between of things.These moments of deep drama and deep Mystery couched between the mundane of running a clinic like a tight ship. Checking things twice, counting vials of pitocin and nonsterile gauze. Bleaching everything down. Then you tuck down in a little room with four other people sleeping around you until the next baby comes in to be born. Or maybe you don't sleep, maybe tonight there's too much work to be done. Maybe you're on couch with the ringing phone and the labor checks and you're up and down and up and down all night long.

Still 8am comes and list fades away like a bad dream and all that stands out in your mind is the crowning, the acquiescence, the birthing, the reveling.

We held hands until I didn't realize we were still doing it. I thanked her for the privilege of being with her and learning from her. She thanked me for my patience, she says she's been telling everyone, she says her baby is perfect. Does she know what I know? How much do I tell her? I thought your baby wasn't coming. I thought no one was coming to help us. I realized I was the only one who was there to get your baby out. My hands moved swiftly, my thoughts lined up like dominoes. My face was white like a sheet, I was later told.

But still that sweet body slid out like a prayer and she moved to receive it and I just offered it all up. All my blessing, all my thanks, those long hours that I spent rubbing down her arms, the rhythm, the ritual, the relaxation, the ache of back and neck, the beat of adrenaline blood. Truthfully, I have never known blessing like this before, such sweet penance, this education of love and stress and magic.

Born

What is it to be born?

To be born.
Born, as in, 
existing as a result of birth

Origin:
From Old English boren, past participle, as in: to bear.

How much can we bear?

20-35 extra pounds, distributed between baby, belly, breasts, blood.

A defined curve in the spine to accommodate the extra weight.

Swollen feet, pinched nerves, bones slowly spreading away from one another.

Curse of Eve, is this what we bear?

She said it feels like a bowling ball of light passing through your pelvis
a hot iron weight covered in spikes cutting its way through you
she thought she was going to die
she thought she was going to tear open

if not for the hot compresses of her midwife.

She awoke and didn't know where she was.
She said she reached a moment of acceptance.
She said it all went away when he came out.

What is that we bear?

The weight of stories passed through generations.
The dreams of our mothers
bruises
from fathers, husbands, lovers
She said,
do you know what puta means? 
She said,
The only reason I'm still fighting is for my baby.

Weight gain varies in pregnancy.

To be born,
as in by another,
as in to be carried.

All these 40 weeks.
All these 280 days.
All these 280 nights.

Inside, the kick of toes against rib bones, gentle beat of hiccups,
delicate exchange of gases and nutrients.
She said, I think he dances sometimes.
Before you were born, you were known.

Before you were born,
we counted your heartbeats.
Like a wineglass against a wall,
we tried to listen to your secret world.
Did you know your parents smiled
to hear you,
your big brother, sister, so proud
just to touch your small baby head.
Before you were born, you were wanted.

To be born,
as in to be born through,
as in to move.

How is it that you know so well how to be born?
Through this darkened tunnel
this squeezing maze of changing bones.
What map do you bear?
What knowledge older than words, older than time?

These are the cardinal movements of babies.

Engagement, descent, flexion, internal rotation,

extension, restitution, external rotation, expulsion

Cardinal:
a leading dignitary in the Catholic church
a new world songbird
of the greatest importance, fundamental.

We wait to know you.
For so long we have dreamed of you.
Yes, us, even us, who have hugged the curves of your body
balloted your tender, forming bones. 
Who are you?
You who has come so far to begin anew.

Born as in
to bear
like, witness.

Out of the desert, picked out of the high heat by birds our animal cells don't know and into former forests, all metal and wood, cities bigger than me but lush so lush. There...there were your arms and mine and, inside, I felt something coming together again.

You love something more when it's parts of you. Maybe it's because I was there when she was born. Or maybe it's because she came from my sister who I will love until both our bodies turn into roots and dirt. Or maybe it's because I'm supposed to love her and watch as my genes stretch on for generations. Or maybe it's because I get to love her, because through her mother, we both know each other. But this is a joy I have never known before. To love and be loved is the source of all healing.

In the old growth forest, rain falls on my face. Ferns tickle the palms of my hands and the bark of giants bears my weight. I try and open my belly up, my heart, liver, womb, soulself open to the cool and wet. Let it lick the dry places of me till I drip again with life. Water feels different here. Water feels different to me after the desert.

When I first moved here, almost a year ago now, I went to a lake with friends. This was water men had made. Years ago, they moved and stopped a river so that it would pour into and be held by this dry earth. We set up tents and built a small fire and looked at the stars with one another. Come daylight, the earth began to heat up and the sun to beat down and I ran to the water. It was cool and sweet as it embraced me. I had been looking for this, I realized. Strange to move from a place which lives inside a cloud most of the time, rainfall its very heart, to the desert and to here find the water I'd been looking for. Warm enough to swim, warm enough to disappear into, warm and wet enough to fall into weightlessness and freedom.

It was in me again. Enamored with an energy from inside me again. I didn't want to die. I wanted to keep breathing and follow these breaths down. I wanted to see the beauty along this path, see what grew in the footfalls of those that walked ahead of me, see what I could grow now with my own two hands.