I once read something that was being passed around the
natural birth social media community called Confessions
of a Very Human Midwife. It went
something like, “To all the mothers whose births I’ve attended, I confess there
were many nights I prayed you wouldn’t go into labor until morning. I confess I wanted to kill your sweet fuzzy
kitty cat the moment it climbed into your bed right after you gave birth.” The confessions went on to create a picture
of a very real, human midwife. We sometimes get mistaken for Mother Theresa. We love to tell birth stories; some make us
sound great and others make us sound crazy. After all we still handled that mad
complication after being up for 50 hours straight.
The thing is…this Mother T view of midwives is all
wrong. We are humans plain and simple, called
to something great. That something great
isn’t midwifery, it is birth. Birth is its own miraculous event. We like to call it beautiful, but I think
every midwife, if we’re real with ourselves, can admit we’ve seen a not so
beautiful birth or two in our careers. Birth is miraculous and life changing.
It usually has a way of taking its miraculous rays and shining on all who are
closely involved, making us look a little less human than we really are.
I’m not saying it doesn’t matter who is at a birth, because
it does indeed matter. I’m not saying that there aren’t some amazing people in
birth teams, because I know there are. Everyone in the room plays a role, good
or bad, in how a birth will play out. I
saw that evidenced this past week in the midst of an adrenaline rush ofunexpected events. (story here) The beauty of our
team working together left me in awe.
Everyone communicated, efficiently and effectively. There was total unity amongst everyone in the
room. Even the roles that sometimes go
unnoticed were so unbelievably important in this setting. The non-medically trained woman in the room
held baby "A" while we worked to get surprise baby "B" out. Even her presence, holding a
baby, played a major role. All other medical hands were needed on deck and had
we left a screaming baby lying on the bed alone, the stress level in the room
would have risen. An unattended,
screaming baby was the last thing our room needed. The midwife kneeling behind me, whose face I
could not see, prayed aloud in my ear and handed me everything I needed before
I even knew I needed it. Her presence alone brought so much peace to me. I love that her hands were right there the
moment I needed them. The pediatric
doctor in the room gave me comfort that even though this baby may need full resuscitation
once it was born, she could take over. The
nurse at the mother’s head gave perfect pushing instructions and inserted IVs
faster than I can blink. The midwifery
student sitting right next to me held the mom up and kept her from falling in
my lap as we maneuvered to get a baby out.
She stuck it out the whole, intense time even though she may have felt
like she wanted to jet. She’s going to
make a crazy good midwife. Teams are
important to me as a midwife. Unity is huge and everyone plays a significant
role.
But there really is only one heroine in every birth story
and she plays the same roll every time…the mother. Labor is physical; it’s intense. Labor is emotional; it’s deep. Labor is life changing; it makes a woman a
mother. Being a mother is a sacrifice
far beyond any sacrifice I’ll ever make by being up for endless hours,
surviving on coffee and chocolate as a midwife. She
pushes and gives birth to life…and sometimes not. She is
the hero. I’m amazed at the strength
of a mother when she must do something for her child. After twenty-two hours of
labor and pushing a baby out, Stephanie smirked and flipped to her hands and
knees to push out her second, surprise baby as if she was taking a leisurely walk
in the park. I don’t think she has slept
longer than 3 hour increments since she went into labor. Two babies demand a lot of breastfeeding,
diaper changing, and skin to skin snuggles.
Her life is forever changed. She
is the heroine.
