Why Midwife?

Almost one hundred years ago, in a town outside of Belfast, a woman named Marian, became pregnant.  It was a wanted pregnancy and the whole family was looking forward to what would be the firstborn.  They kept telling the woman that she was doing too much. Labor began one day after she had done “too much” and the baby was born far far too early.  It was a girl and she was tiny.  Too too tiny.  What were the chances of survival for her?  They did the only thing they knew to do.  They placed this wee babe into a shoebox, and kept her in the oven.  It might sound crazy now, but this was the days before incubators.  They kept her there in the dark warm oven for the first three months of her life.  Taking her out as little as possible.  And she lived. 

Now, some thought she was a bit strange, this woman from North Ireland.  And perhaps that lack of human comfort and touch in the first three months of her life had something to do with it.  Who knows.  But still, she grew up, survived the second world war and moved to America.  This woman, Louisa, married a man named John, and became pregnant herself.   Her pregnancy went to term, and in the middle of a snow storm that even New Yorkers thought remarkable, John drove her to the hospital for the birth of their first child.  She struggled and labored.  It was a delivery that epitomized Eve's curse.  The babe was breech – bottom first – and it was a wicked birth.  Three things happened in that hospital: the babe was born with twisted feet, the mom was told she’d never have another baby, and for twelve days mother and child were kept apart.  After 9 months of togetherness and warmth, of familiar heartbeats and voices, the newborn girl was nursed with a rubber nipple by a parade of different women and without the comfort and familiarity of her mother and home.  And her Momma missed looking into her newborns eyes, missed holding her to her breast, missed that newborn smell.  Just as with her own birth, the bonding process was terribly broken.   By all accounts, she was neither a nice lady nor a good Mom. 

Twenty four years later that baby girl, whose feet faced forward now, was planing the birth of her own first child.  She chose the only hospital and practice in the city that would allow a father to be present for the birth.  She had a typical delivery for the 1970s, with a routine episiotomy and repair, but she fought to have her baby at her side.  She nursed her baby for two and half years.  She nurtured that bond every way she knew how.  Because she knew deep down that those early days matter.  That the way we meet our babies and the way our babies meet the world makes a difference.

When I grew up and became a midwife, I kept hearing of midwives whose mothers or grandmothers had also been midwives and I desperately wanted to have a connection like that to my ancestors.  I had this idea that it would infer some sort of genetic memory that would make me a better midwife; that in the heat of the moment, some distant ancestor would whisper in my ear what to do when a baby was stuck or a mom was struggling.  But then it hit me: I didn’t become a midwife because my grandmother had been one.  I became a midwife because my grandmother needed one.  I became a midwife to do what I can to make each birth healthy, peaceful and loving.  So that babies and mothers and fathers and families can bond and start off on the right foot.  Because maybe, just maybe, a baby peacefully born, is a baby well-loved, and a baby well-loved becomes a better happier person.  And a better happier person makes the world a more just and welcoming place for the next baby that comes along.  Perhaps the bumper sticker is right: Peace on Earth begins with birth.

the distance between

Assumption of the Virgin

I was on a long drive home to my family after visiting a student midwife at the clinic where she is learning the art of midwifery when I listened to an interview that Terry Gross did with Irish novelist Cólm Tóibín. He has written a new novel called The Testament of Mary, in which Mary examines her life twenty years after the crucifixion of her son.

Tóibín explains that the idea for the novel came to him after some contemplation of two paintings. The first painting that he spent time with was Titian’s masterpiece, Assumption of the Virgin. The virgin is depicted beautiful, whole, and youthful as she is brought bodily into heaven. Her heavenly Father is above, cherubim lift her up to the heavens, and the Apostles admire and reach for her from below. Colm explains that he pondered this Venetian masterpiece for some years before he saw Tinterettos’s painting depicting the Christ’s crucifixion in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. He describes the Titian as “a glorious painting” and the Tinteretto as “Enormous, it’s long, it’s untidy, it’s chaotic. It has the crucifixion at the center, but all around it every form of untidiness, and human activity as sort of odd and strange and random. “ He goes on, in his beautiful Irish lilt to explain, “It struck me the distance between the two things, between the ideal and the real. And it struck me that that story had not been told. The story of what it might have been like on that day, in real time, for somebody and how they would remember it.”

Tinteretto's depiction of the crucifixion

For me this flows naturally, because who is Mary if not the quintessential Mother? She was given an impossible task, an impossible child and an impossible marriage. All mothers feel this way at times. Yet, despite it all she brought up the Christ. People the world over look up to her, pray to her, write about her, paint her and worship her. She is not the first Mother, but we seem to have decided she was the best. You don't have to be Catholic to appreciate this.


We have an ideal of natural childbirth that many believe is as unattainable as the Virgin Mother’s assent into heaven. What do we think will happen? Do we think that our babes will slide from our bodies unaided and us unscathed as surely Mary was in the stable? I suspect her reality of birth was a bit different. We do not know from the record if Mary had a midwife, but we do know it was her first birth and that it occurred in the stable of an inn.

A few things we might extrapolate from that. She gave birth surrounded by large animals, the musty smell of horses and at least one donkey, earth, leather, sweat and manual labor. Horse shit on the ground. In the midst of this mess and quiet chaos, she probably labored hard. First babies usually don’t come that easy. She breathed deep, all those scents coming in through her nose and out of her mouth, as she tried to relax her muscles; as she gave in to her own animal nature in order to bring forth new life. And at long last that was what she did. Eventually she did have a swaddled babe in her arms, but first there was blood, and placenta, and dirt and grime. There was a gush of amniotic fluid, sweat on her skin and tears flowing from her eyes, there were gasps of joy and sighs of relief as her newborn son took his first breaths.

What is the lesson here? Perhaps that we all have untold stories. Perhaps some of us do have seemingly miraculously easy, tidy and clean births. Births with an immediate latch, an intact perineum and a suddenly slim waist. But most of us, have something a little darker, with more texture, more smells. We give birth to our babes with our own sweat and tears. Sometimes there are surgical cuts and stitches. Sometimes something down right frightening or sad happens. Sometimes we walk away with a healthy baby in our arms, and a sense of grief in our hearts, nonetheless. And this is the space between. The space between what is ideal and what is real. The space where a story is waiting to be told.