From the Archives

I wrote this in November of 2009...I remember the day like it was yesterday.  I bet the mom, whose birth I missed by minutes, remembers that day, too.

I am a student midwife apprenticing with a midwife in my community. Recently, she asked me to begin documenting the births I attend in whatever way seemed most appropriate. A few days after she made this request, she called in the middle of the night to let me know one of our moms was in labor.  I knew intuitively that I would miss the birth. My mind wondered why I shouldn’t go back to bed, save the gas, and the energy. But my intuition told me to go forward. In the end, I might have missed the birth, but I think I found the lesson.

How Birth Is Like A Country Road

It occurred to me today that there are a life's lessons in the travel to a birth. We are often misguided in the notion that the birth is the event we are attending to. We fail to realize it's actually the moment that will be our teacher. 

So country roads, damn country roads. Never fails. There they are. They look so different in the dark, dark night.  Even if you've traveled them numerous times in the daylight, their night life is like a long lost identical twin -- the exact same, but totally different. 

I think childbirth classes are like the general driving directions: cross streets, landmarks, things you'll pass along the way, the signs that will point your direction.  Your mother's story, your best friend's birth, the story of the mother of the brother of the sister of your co-worker's neighbor are just the same: merely guideposts along the way.  When you see the stop sign, stop; the yield sign, yield.  Markers, posts, landmarks. 

But here's the thing: in the cold, dark night on a country road, you can't necessarily see the things that people have pointed out to you to guide your way. Your field of vision is limited to the spray of light shed by your car's headlights. Even when they are turned to bright, it's not necessarily any more illuminating. There's more glare and perhaps more peripheral vision, but not really any more sense of what lies further beyond. 

No, on a country road in the dark, at some point you realize that the only information to see you through is the few feet in front of your car as you travel forward.  In a somewhat meditative process, the music that seemed to be your friend on the journey is quieted so you can focus more on the road ahead, the next contraction. Just as much as you need to know, need to see is available -- a gentle hand, a warming word, silence.  That's what we get and that's what we give -- just enough for the now. 

The potholes always catch you by surprise, even when you're ready for them. There is something about the way the light plays on the landscape that makes us incapable of perceiving every pitfall in our path. It's only as we survey our trip in retrospect that we think, "And then I hit that hole right near the sycamore.  Remember it's there on the way back through next time."

Along the road, somewhat lost, not able to rely on our usual senses we find that our sight and hearing have been supplanted by that internal sense of direction.  We may continue to reach out the way we know how -- phone, knock on a door ("Can you help me? I'm looking for a certain house."), perhaps even a co-pilot. Invariably, there is only one person able to put foot on gas pedal, hands on steering wheel, eyes on road. Only one person who will birth that baby. Invariably, the cell phone connection will be lost; the kind neighbor will give inadequate directions; the co-pilot will remain 16 inches away in her own seat. It's a singular journey.

At some point, when all else is exhausted, there comes a time when the only way down the road is...well, down the road. A surrender is made.  "I feel really lost. I'm not sure this is the way. I've done the best I know how. I can only keep going. What other choice do I have? Stop and wait for daylight? A rescue?" 

And in that minute there is no more noise, no more second-guessing, no more wondering if you took a wrong turn. There is only intent mindfulness on the next indicated action, movement, lurch forward. Commitment. What falls away is the belief that there is only one way down the road, to the house. What becomes apparent and entire is that right there -- in that moment, at that time, hands on wheel, foot on pedal, eyes closed -- is that we're moving toward something.  We are going somewhere. 

I believe there is a second time when along the road we submit to the minute. We say to ourselves, "I'll do whatever it takes to keep going forward." We say it to ourselves in a way that doesn't even sound like speaking. It is an intense, full-bodied knowing and display that we will go, we will do, we will be whatever and wherever we need to make progress. Squatting, walking, rocking, crying, silent, rhythmic.

That last effort or instinct on our part, in my experience, is most often met by the surprise find of the exact house you were looking for. It's like in a split second you see the house, think to yourself, "There's a house," then wonder what in the heck a house it doing way out here, and then remember that that's where you were headed in the first place -- exactly like the first time a mother touches her baby's head as it is emerging. That connection is complete.

Opening the door, walking the walkway and crossing the threshold -- you're finally there. You have arrived. In that minute, you have arrived at the destination. The pieces are finally in place and the jigsaw that was the reality of just a minute prior now fuses to make a perfect picture. Baby on belly. 

But here's the thing I love the most about the drive and about the road. The birth will take time, the labor, the welcoming, the checking, the mothering, the cleaning -- and then you'll get back in your car. It will be light; hours will have passed. 

You'll back your car down the road and start for home, but what you'll see is that the entire landscape has changed. Your vision is no longer limited to the destination. Your eyes will no longer be riveted on the few feet in front of the car. What will happen is you'll raise up your head and witness the trees, their colors and their leaves in the wind.  You'll realize you are nestled in a valley or on a hilltop, not just at the end of the road. There will be endless heavens above and fields around, the animals and plants will be coming alive with the heat of the sun. And there is it is: life all around, inside, outside, throughout you and everything, everyone. Motherhood everywhere. 

And that's what happens. You arrive at the place you think is the destination, and once there, you finally see that there is so much more to behold on the journey.