letter to a sister student midwife

I just finished a conversation with my 85 year-old grandmother who regaled me in detail about the birth of her first baby: a post-WWII birth in an overcrowded maternity ward where she labored entirely by herself, at times on a gurney in a hallway, and was forced by nurses not to push--nurses who slapped her face and laid themselves over her legs to keep them closed until the doctor could arrive, who promply knocked her out and pulled out her baby--her beautiful, black-haired baby girl--and when she awoke with empty arms and no recollection of the glory and payday of all her hard work, she had to beg, plead, insist, and finally bellow at the nurses to let her meet her baby--HER baby, HER baby.

Yes, my grandmother remembers everything--everything that was said (and not said), everything that was done (and not done), everything she wishes she had been conscious to experience, everything. She remembers everything. Meanwhile, the love of her life waited down the street at a bar (there was nowhere else to go, the waiting room was so crowded) because, of course, men weren't even allowed on the labor and delivery floor, nevermind in the delivery room. Yes, my grandfather, a war hero who had just earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star at Okinawa--a war hero who could get his ass blown off in a foxhole and watch his buddies die horrific, bloody deaths, but God forbid he witness the bloody miracle of the birth of his own child.

"That's just how babies were born back then..."

My grandmother's story is every American mother's story from that era. And yet. To this day. She knows in her heart, she knows to the center of her bones it was wrong, it was wrong. It was wrong. At 85 years old, still she grieves. Her motherheart, her womanheart will never forget how she gave her sacred body, her sacred birth, her sacred baby willingly and unquestioningly to a system that didn't know--and still does not know, and does not want to know, and never wanted to know--it is important how babies are born; it is important how mothers are born; it is important how fathers are born. She will never forget.

We. Mothers. Never. Forget.

This work is important. This work is more important than we even know, this calling to stand guard at the brave and infinite threshold of birth. Unfurl the pirate flag, sister. We sail for no country, no system, no insurance company, no hospital, no maternity ward, no doctor, no maniacal trend, no despicable standard of care, no twisted billion dollar industry. How many of our sisters--our pitocin-epidural-cesarean sisters--will look back with still-broken hearts and have nothing but the cold comfort of saying, "That's just how babies were born back then..."?

Well, not on our clock. We're taking it back. And we'll do it one woman at a time, but we're taking it back, so help me God.