Hi,
This story was sent to me by a midwife friend in
Israel, who does home births. Might be worth sharing with your partners....
Enjoy,
Andrea
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Married to the Midwife
by Tom Smith
Web Exclusive
Sharon's alarm buzzes, and I wait for her to turn
it off. Finally I roll over, mumbling that it's
her alarm, and would she please turn it off-only
to find myself talking to an empty bed. I groan,
remembering the 2 a.m. phone call and thinking of the harried morning ahead.
When they call, she goes. It doesn't matter what
time it is, it doesn't matter where in the movie
you are or who's over for dinner. Out the door
she goes, and woe to the man who tries to stop
her. I did, once. We were having a fight and she
got the phone call. It wasn't fair, I said. I
stamped my foot. I cried. She just got madder and
madder. She asked me if I wanted to call the
woman and tell her to go ahead and have the baby
herself. For a moment I hated the woman having
the baby, but I also began to realize that for
Sharon, a laboring mother always takes first priority.
I've heard midwives say, sometimes jokingly,
sometimes with fierceness, that there is no
profession quite like it. I agree, and would add
that there is nothing quite like being married to
a midwife. I hate what she does and I love what
she does. I find it annoying and I find it
exciting. Someone once told me that the divorce
rate is high among homebirth midwives. I thought,
"Are you kidding? What with the low pay and the
bad hours and throw in the risk of prosecution in
our state, what man wouldn't want a midwife for a spouse?"
Am I angry? Sometimes. Do I want her to do
something else? No way. How can I, when she comes
home at 4 a.m. with tears in her eyes and tells
me the story of a mother who was so afraid
because her last baby had died in utero at 6
months, and how the grief and pain and joy
combined as the 9 lb. baby burst into the world?
She loves her work and she loves her women. She
makes so many hard choices. I don't want to make
her choose between her work and me. Besides, I'd probably lose.
When our daughter, Hannah, whines and asks why
her mother has to go out again tomorrow, Sharon
says simply, "It's my work, it's what I do."
That's true, but it is also her calling and her
passion. It's what she does to make a difference
in the world. She is a lioness when she says,
"Women need to have a choice about where they
have their babies." I admire her greatly at that
moment--and then the phone rings. I listen as she
explains about the importance of eating to feed
the baby. She waves her hand as she talks,
cutting to shreds the myth of minimal weight gain
during pregnancy. She says, "For God's sake, if
you're hungry, eat! Eat lots of protein. Sure,
four eggs with hot sauce is fine. We want fat,
happy babies." She hangs up, and the phone rings again.
One day Hannah answered the phone, and then
called Sharon, who retreated into the bedroom. I
asked my daughter who it was. She said she didn't
know, but it sounded like a midwife. I thought,
"Oh yes, I know what you mean. The friendly but
businesslike tone, the willingness to talk to
children and the sound of sisterhood coming over
the lines, 'I need to talk to your mother about
something.'" As Sharon shuts the door to the
bedroom I hear her say, "We use comfrey and
rosemary in our sitz bath for postpartum moms and findÂ…"
The homebirth midwives I know soak up knowledge
like hungry sponges. I envy Sharon's
single-minded drive for information, whether
found in a medical bulletin or in the herbal lore
that is passed around orally. She eagerly
collects birth stories and medical texts,
experiential knowledge and book knowledge. These
women have to know their stuff, because they walk
a pretty narrow line--especially in Indiana.
Homebirth midwifery is not exactly illegal here, but neither is it licensed.
Sometimes I feel like I'm living with an
emotional roller coaster. Most of the births are
uneventful, and Sharon returns home exhausted and
satisfied. But sometimes when she gets home her
face is filled with pain and she begins, "We had
to transportÂ…" A story of loss begins, and I go
down with her into the anguish. Often the stories
are not easy to listen to: the agonizing decision
as it becomes increasingly clear that this birth
is not going to happen in the home, the cold
sterility of the ER room, the gruffness and
sometimes outright hostility of the doctors who
don't have much contact with midwives. And
through it all, the grief, because often, though
not always, a transport means a cesarean. The
midwife goes along, assisting the woman's
partner, suggesting options at the hospital. The
cord of sisterhood remains intact even in this
environment, so different from the quiet security and warmth of a home.
I confess that Sharon's profession frightens me
at times. She works so close to the window
between life and death. She assists in the
pouring forth of life into the world, and
sometimes it's a dangerous place to stand.
I talk about it as if I'm actually there, but I'm
just a small part of the supporting cast. I'm a
listener. I wonder at the beauty and the pain, at
the toughness and vulnerability of women, and yet
I stand outside. I learn the names of the
birthing women and hear their birth stories, but never meet most of them.
I often think that I'm married to someone on the
Wise Woman path. But Sharon is not an archetype;
she's a real woman who deals in blood and pain
and bulging bellies and the epiphany of new life.
She is a guardian of the birth time, and when
that times comes, there nothing to do but let her
go. The phone rings and she's gone.
Tom Smith divides his time between writing,
homeschooling his two children, Ben and Hannah,
and working at the local library. He lives in
Lafayette, Indiana, where he is still married to the midwife after 14 years.
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