Unnatural Childbirth

On my way out of the hospital on Friday I stepped into the elevator with a woman, maybe twenty-five years old, she was holding a manila envelope to her chest and weeping. She turned to me and said “It feels like tugging…” I asked, “What does?” She replied “That tugging here” and touched her breasts. “They feel heavy like they do when I feed her…my baby.” I said, “Yeah, that’s totally normal.” She sobbed and said, “No, you don’t understand. CPS took her away. They told me she’d be here today and I just got out and came for her, but they took her away already.” They lied.

I told her, “It will work out for you, and for her, in the end.”

I guess I lied, too.

and I will align myself with nothing...

I had been struggling with my clinical specialty until my community health clinical instructor who was been a L&D nurse for 10 years said to me, "I don't see the predicament. Sometimes, you can't tell the difference between a birth and a death. I've been at plenty of births where I was like 'was that a death?' and plenty of deaths where I was like 'was that a birth?'"

Drawing by Karlynn Jayne Holland.

...and I will enjoin my heart with no-one's
cause I was untried
when I was applied the light of birth.
- "Patience" Royal Stable Music 1997