Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/joyous-new-life/5026150/
Midwife means “with woman,” and no other definition so aptly describes what I have done for 16 years. What I do—to be with a birthing person, to be with birth, to be with the uncertainty and fatigue, thick odours, wrenching pain and upheaval.
I am exhausted by what I do.
I am shaken.
And I am renewed.
I am often the first to see the emerging life, the slick tip-top of the baby’s head, my hand supporting the tremendous strength and acquiescence of the vaginal passage. When the little face emerges, little eyes blink into mine, a little mouth scowls into my gloved fingertips. I support as they are released from their mother’s body and relinquish them to their mother’s outside skin, to sighs of relief, cries of welcome and love.
I witness transformation—aquatic creatures become land dwellers and air breathers, people become parents. One minute, one thing. In the very next, another.
Once a client birthed on her knees on the floor of her child’s bedroom. She grasped both the post of the bunkbed and her partner’s arm for support. My hands held the curly head as it widened into the world, gently rocked the shoulders under the pubic bone. The air in ...