Humans and Heroines

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.