Nacimiento

I drifted off to sleep after writing that last post, joking with the other girls that a woman would come in complete and pushing. As I am still in orientation in the clinic we are "shadowing" the interns and watching the roles that each of them play in the birth. I had shadowed Olympia as primary a few nights before and we spent the whole night with a young girl having her first baby. At around five in the morning she and her mom decided to go to the hospital, I suspect there was some strong persuasion going on from grandma as she had difficult obstetrical history. It had been a long night with a bit of a sad ending so I was hoping that perhaps on this shift Olympia and I could complete the circle in a sense.

We both thought it was a joke when we got woken up an hour or so later being told we had a complete and pushing mama! I took the role on as documenter recording each new progression of the labor. For example: head born @ 11:57 am. Baby born at 11:59am, September 25th and so on. In retrospect I was a little shaken by the power I had simply as a documenter, especially in this birth. I made the call that it was 11:59pm when I could have seen the clock as 12:00am which would have made her birthday September 26, a date that she will be used to identify for the rest of her life. Part of being a student at MLL requires that we write a birth report after each birth with our reflections on that birth. Here is mine.


First and thousandth birth....
Allisson’s birth was the first and the thousandth for me. It simply was, as I am, and seemed less of a mystery then I had anticipated. Birth. Beautiful and complete, yes I know this, yes this is familiar. More familiar then anything has ever has been. I am struggling to find the words to describe it. My emotions and thought process seem slow and glitchy. Attempting to find the end of my thoughts to be picked up and examined seems fruitless. It is complete, a full circle with no ending and no beginning to it. I don’t think anything else in life has ever felt so whole and so completely satisfying.

After Allisson was born I lay on the on the bed beside her while her mama was taken care of.
As I listened to to her breath, the thump of her heart and the gurgles of her tummy I was struck with how defined and perfect she was, this creation of woman’s womb. Her skin was so soft, vernix tucked into the roles of her neck, her eyes closed tight against the bright light and her tongue and mouth rooting. She represented to me the beginning and as I looked at her I also saw the end and I found bliss in both.