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.