Still

It had been a while since I cried or “teared up” at a birth. Not that I think I have gone cold to birth or anything of the sort but it does become your job and some people you connect with less than others, etc, etc…  Anyway, I was at a birth 2 days ago that caught me off guard and I was pleasantly surprised when I ended up realizing I was on the verge of crying. When I received report at 7am from the off going midwife the patient, Liza, was 8cm and feeling rectal pressure with a preterm infant. From the moment I entered I realized this was going to be one of “those” births. The births where the mother was planning a birth center birth and sought out our practice because of very alternative views/values. Facing a pre-term birth though her venue for delivery had to be changed. Continuous monitoring when before there was only planned doppler auscultation. IV fluids and antibiotics when before it was anticipated she would eat and drink as she felt she needed to.  She was standing beside the bed stark naked it all of her pregnant glory. She had about 5 or 6 strands of vibrantly colored beads around her neck...some longer, laying over her pendulous breasts. Her eyes were closed and she very briefly opened them, acknowledging my entrance only to close them again and return to her inner trance. The music in the background immediately took me back to Africa. The rhythmic drum along with the gutteral chants and groans. All lights were off. Her mother was sitting on the sofa with her eyes closed, whispering her prayers (I assumed, maybe though they were chants or something else). Her partner was pacing back and forth kind of like a caged tiger. He had long, lovely dreadlocks and several strings of beads matching Liza’s.  Behind Liza was her sister. Each time Liza would get a contractions she would squat down and groan, rotating her hips in ways that made you want to join her. And her sister did just that. She would grab onto Liza’s hips, squat down behind her and join in the soul binding dance that connected all child -bearing women in the world that day - it seemed so anyway. I took my place standing quietly against the counter. I placed a pack of sterile gloves in my pocket so when it was evident the time was near I would place them on my hands and do my job as inobtrusively as possible. I assumed I would be in and out of there in an hour or so and I began thinking of what would be my most pressing task when I arrived at the office. The delivery played out much like I expected it would I had to squat down on the floor to support her perineum and catch the squirmy little one… He came out screaming so the NICU staff left almost as quickly as the arrived - rolling their eyes at yet another “odd” delivery by the midwives. But what happened next caught me off guard. I was touched by the moment of it all. I stood there in the background again… waiting for the cord to stop pulsating and just watched…. The tribal music still in the background… the mother grasping her silent newborn who barely realized he was born...the sister lying beside the mother almost spooning her… staring in silence at the beauty of the baby…. the father sitting next to his wife, with his hand on his freshly born son, head raised to the sky, eyes closed with tears streaming down his face… and her mother still speaking words only God could hear.  The scene was so moving and genuine that my words here most surely do not convey the beauty of it. I found myself forgetting about what stacks of charts were waiting for me at the office, forgetting about my teenage son who was steaming mad at me today because he had to walk to school that morning due to my need to be at the hospital - again…. forgetting about everything except the beauty of birth. What a sweet surprise to be reminded of that truth on that day.