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.