In 2004, three years ago, I began my training to become a midwife. I never realised how far the journey would take me, or who I would become as I shared the journey of birth with the women I met. There has been joy, tears, and disillusionment but through it all the beauty of birth continues to inspire me. This story was written on the occasion of delivering my 40th baby, the minimum number required to qualify as a midwife. It is the powerful and personal story of one woman’s birth, and my own dedication to all those I have cared for as a student.
I’ll always remember Charlie’s* birth. The details are etched, gentle colour and quiet sound, still photographs in my mind. Telling the story of the quiet entrance of a baby into the world and the day that my soul came full circle. In some small way, I remember all the births I have attended although the details blur together, the faces of the mothers in some cases blending into one, each one is a piece of the whole, the sum of my short experience as a student midwife. I am humbled by them all, but Charlie and her mother Susie* are different. The description of their birth will be there in black and white at the bottom of my birth register proudly bearing the number 40 written in ball point pen.
I’d met Susie towards the end of her 3rd pregnancy, and over the next few weeks I got to know her well. We spent time chatting at her antenatal appointments, planning her birth, talking about breastfeeding and baby clothes. But when Susie’s due date came and went, she was fed up and tired, with swollen ankles and high blood pressure. She began to despair that her baby would ever arrive.
The following morning I was in clinic when Susie called. She sounded excited, “I think this is it! I’ve finally had a few contractions!’ As we talked on the phone for a while, her contractions became noticeably stronger and longer. I arranged to meet her at the birth centre straight away. When I got there, Susie had already arrived and was being cared for by a midwife I knew as we’d worked together before. “I’ll be just out side if you need me’ she said, ‘just pull the buzzer’. She asked me if I would like her to be present when the baby was born or just hovering outside the door. I wasn’t sure, I’d not delivered a baby alone before, but she reassured me that I wasn’t alone, all I had to do was call and she’d be there, she told me she had every faith in me. I realised this was something I really wanted to do.
As I went into the room I could see that Susie was obviously in strong labour, she was doubled over the bed, mid contraction, with her husband, David rubbing her back. She looked up as I came in, “I don’t remember it ever being this bad’ she groaned. We hugged, ‘It’ll be ok’ I said, ‘It looks to me like your baby’s on its way’. Susie agreed to be examined, wonderfully, I found her to be 7 cm’s dilated and she was relieved that the pains were doing their work.The next job was to make Susie comfortable, and we made a nest for her in the corner of the room with beanbags, mats and pillows. Susie settled herself on all fours leaning over the beanbag, David and I taking it in turns to rub her back. We waited, and time slowed. It was very peaceful, just the soft sound the baby’s heartbeat when I listened every 15 minutes and the sound of Susie’s breath as she rode her contractions.
There was nothing to do except watch and hold the space we shared, floating as we were on the edge of time. She was so beautiful. Strong, wild and alone, timeless, in her own world where we could not quite reach her. Labouring as women have done for millennia. And then she began to push, deep groans from the depths of her belly heralded the gush of clear water which soaked the mats beneath her. Suddenly her baby’s head was crowning and with the next few contractions, Susie breathed her warm, slippery baby into my waiting hands.
She was pink and crying within seconds and I passed the baby through to Susie so that she could see that she had birthed a gorgeous baby girl. We were all in tears, awed in our own way by the process we had just witnessed, Susie, David, Baby and me. Susie put Charlie straight to her breast and she began to nuzzle as the afterbirth followed. David cut the cord and we snuggled mother and baby together in warm blankets and towels.
A soft knock on the door and the midwife crept in, ‘congratulations’, and her smile was as much for me as the new parents, “would you all like some tea and toast?”
I realised that the moment had been so perfect, the connection between the three of us, so strong in the room that I had not even thought to call her in.
Red Griffiths-Haynes
April 2007
*All name change to protect confidentiality.