Midwives

by Chris Bohjalian

WHEN THINGS GO WRONG in obstetrics, they go wrong fast. They fall off a cliff.

demand any medical intervention. It’s a natural process that women have been handling since, well, since the beginning of time. But we’ve lost our collective memory of the fact that although labor is natural, it’s dangerous. Let’s face it, there was a time when women and babies died all the time in labor.”

back labor was hard and painful, but it wasn’t fatal.

The list of things that can go wrong in a home birth is frightening and it is endless. That’s why doctors prefer the technological and institutional support of a hospital.”

You can’t spend your entire life avoiding chance. It’s out there, it’s inescapable, it’s a part of the soul of the world. There are no sure things in this universe, and it’s absolutely ridiculous to try and live like there are! There’s nothing that drives me crazier than when

No one said living isn’t a pretty chancy business, Sibyl. No one gets out of here alive.”

there were those girls who became mid-wives: girls who could not get enough of the tiniest of babies—the newborn—girls who would grow into women who absolutely reveled in the magnificent but messy process of birth.

Those girls who became midwives, on the other hand, knew midwifery was their calling at a very early age, or—as my mother’s path suggested—had one profound, life-changing experience involving birth that pulled them in.

I even had a Nurse Barbie, although to be honest she spent most of her time with Ken with her clothes off.

Birth is a big miracle foreshadowed by lots of little ones. Conception. Little limbs. Lanugo. A fingerprint, hard bones. The quickening. The turning. The descent.

DOCTORS DO NOT PROTEST, they lobby. They are not the sort of people who will stand around outside a courthouse with placards and sandwich boards, or hold hands and sing rally songs. Mid-wives, on the other hand, are. Midwives are exactly the sort of folk who will use public spectacle to make a political point.

Midwives, by their very nature and profession, have always challenged authority; they’ve always been a bit too independent—in the eyes of men, anyway.

Very few of us really remember pain when it’s gone; we can’t recall how awful it was.

while labor is natural, it’s dangerous:

No one, she told Stephen, wanted a midwife who went certifiable under pressure.)

once you’re past your first cadaver, human tissue loses its ability to shock, and organs and bones become routine.

some lawyers think you can tell how the jury has ruled the moment they reenter the courtroom after their deliberations. If they look at the defendant, he’s going to be acquitted. If they refuse to look at him—if they’re unwilling or unable to look at him—he’s going to be convicted.”