The baby’s head is now visible at the vaginal opening, ratcheting apart the pelvic bones in an act of unfathomable glory and physics. The midwife asks mother and father if they want to reach down and touch the firm, round, centralized mass, which is the first emergence of their child. They look at each other as if the mid-wife is both goddess and crazy woman.
“Should we?” asks the father. He is standing at the top of the bed as if his movements have been restricted to that area only. He has seen his wife’s vagina innumerable times but the emergence of a baby from it has now rendered the region inaccessible to his visual cortex. He is tired. His curly hair is actually the same texture as that of the baby’s. Sweat has matted his hair down too. He is acting like he is on a first date. He can only anticipate the needs of his partner during a time about which he has no experience. He is all at once tender, nervous and too much.
“Go ahead,” says the mid-wife, “its okay.”
From the top of the birthing bed mother and father cannot see what they are about to do which is probably a good thing. The labia majora are extremely swollen draping the delivery site not unlike bulbous curtains. The cervix is extruded into a membranous tense ring. The baby’s head looks and feels not unlike a mature brown coconut. Amniotic fluid, urine, sweat, blood and baby stool cover all in slippery slop. A camera on the inside would reveal a child with eyes closed-tight, chin tucked to chest, arms held to the side with shoulders slumped. A real-life superman about to fly-out. But from the outside nothing seems particularly heroic save for the 8 hours that the mother has been pushing
The father holds his wife with one hand and reaches down with the other to some indeterminate point between his wife’s legs touching the pads of his finger gently from side to side as if looking something that has rolled under a heavy cabinet. The mother is in better position for access. The raised bed pushes her torso towards her legs, which are spread wide through a combination of stirrups and supportive family matriarchs with concerned expressions. The mother simply unclasps her hands from her outer thighs and moves them center and down as if she is at a river’s edge about to wash her face.
At first only husband and wife appendages meet.
“What’s that?”
“That’s me, silly”
“You know you can look down there, Honey,”
“Thanks but no thanks.”
But then…
“Is that your knuckle?”
“Is that his head?”
“Oh my God!”
“Yes, that’s his head,” says the mid-wife, “we are very close now. Just a little while more.” The couple tries to hold back tears.
In this hospital in San Franciso’s Mission District, uterine contractions are measured by a probe that rests on the mother’s abdomen that produces a number from 0 to 200 on the display of a very large machine, which rests on an end-table. Though the machine doesn’t produce a sound, the effect of rising numbers on the rooms is nearly as dramatic as the uterine squeeze with subsequent maternal cry producing them. It’s not right, but often during the late stages of labor, gaze is inadvertently moved from mother’s face to machine face. It’s as if one is listening to a good power point presentation with attention shifting from speaker to screen. In this way, all eyes save the mother’s, gets affixed to the machine display in anticipation of at first arithmetic then geometrically rising numbers.
“Here we go,” says the mid-wife. The numbers on the uterine contraction machine rise steadily and as if forewarned by technology, the mother’s back arches and the skin of her neck and face strain and redden. She cries out in low grade and tone. She pushes down from atop an infant with a 36 centimeter head going through a cervix which maximally dilated is 10 centimeters. Her cry reflects the disproportion. It is as purposeful as desperate, coming from the body’s core and at crescendo is pure power and pain.
The couple goes through a few of these cycles lasting about 15 minutes. They are cheered on by the midwife, the other nurses, family, the pediatric service and occasional cleaning person. “You can do it!” “That’s it!” “You are a star!” “Give us a baby!” “Baby you’re doing great!”
At the point when the mother says please don’t talk to me, I can’t do this anymore and the room goes silent and her partners says sure you can and she replies but you don’t know how it feels and he says that’s true but I know you, with one last effort, the baby’s head suddenly slips out to the neck much like the pulp of a seriously squeezed grape.
“All right, Sofie,” says the mid-wife, “stop pushing.”
The midwife checks for a noose of the umbilical cord and pulls one loop over the baby’s neck. She then places her gloved hands over the baby’s ears and gently pushes down to deliver the front shoulder and then pulls up to delivery the other. There is a gush of remnant amniotic fluid as the rest of the baby’s body shoots out. This inevitably produces a simultaneous gasp from mother, baby and crowd.
As the mid-wife arcs the baby directly onto the mother’s belly, the mother reflexively grabs at this new weight as if it might drop. The baby starts to cry-- louder and louder. The skin turns quickly from purple to blue to ruddy to pink. The mother starts to cry. “Look at our baby,” she says. The father in shock and awe also starts to cry. He has not cried in 10 years. “Yes, look at our baby.” He wipes at his tears with his shoulders because one hand still holds his wife and the other is now pressed onto the back of his newborn son.
“You did it,” says the father.
“We did it,” says the mother.
They actually aren’t listening to one another as they speak. Their words whisper then trail off. There attention is on the baby who now warm has stopped crying and beneath a flurry of blankets is trying to squirm his way up to suckle though he cannot since he is still tethered by the umbilical cord and he is not so coordinated. But the cord will be cut with the cessation of pulsations-- maternal blood good to the last drop. The baby will be lifted higher to breast and parents. The bright lights will cause the baby to blink too fast. His sneeze will cause those in the room to chuckle. And both mother and father will hold him as if he’s away been right there.
