The phone rings at 7:30 – I am still asleep. A midwife-friend asks if I can come help a couple birth their baby. I shower, grab my bag, kiss my baby and husband, and head up the hill.
I see him first. “Alan?” I introduce myself as he applies counterpressure to the heap of a person lying in front of him. She is the beautiful Audra. Her face glistens with sweat, sticky long strands of hair cling to her cheeks. In the throes of labor, she looks Snow White-ish and other-worldly.
This work is intense. She cries out. Her own mother comes, bringing soft hands and sweet words; she did this for her daughter, and now her daughter does this for a son. As connected as they were through cord-to-organ are they now head-to-head, their noses mirrored. One face reflects pain while the other projects protection.
Alan has her now, cradled in his arms as she rocks toward him. I press, press, press on that bulging place on her back that signals a baby's passing – that upside-down triangle which starts where flesh dips and thins at the top of her warm buttocks. I smell her – the smell of life – spicey, earthy, and hot, and tinny. Alan's fingers graze mine and for a blink we connect with this woman's power. It won't be long.
Her baby emerges in a bag of egg-drop soup, wearing his cord as a scarf. The midwife gently unwinds his traveling clothes and hands him to his mother. He squints his eyes and searches, following his hands like a blood-hound on the trail. The force that expelled him caused her breasts to force out shiny beads of honey. As he suckles, mother and baby are brought back to their circle of symbiosis.
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