The Amish Midwife by Mindy Starns Clark, Leslie Gould Read Free Book Online

for me to imagine that she’d had more children. Maybe she and her husband had decided not to. He wasn’t my father, but out of respect for me…
    “Good evening.” A clerk greeted me.
    I responded, thankful I still had on my dress clothes and heels. At least I looked the part of a savvy shopper.
    Another clerk welcomed me a second later. As I browsed through the store, the fantasy began again. I would meet my biological mother at a nice restaurant in downtown Philadelphia—unless she’d moved to Manhattan. Then I’d go there. I’d wear slacks and a silk blouse and high heels to show I was proud of the height she—or maybe just my grandmother—had passed on to me. I’d look like her. Finally, I’d look like someone. She’d have blond hair and brown eyes and a wide smile, and she would hug me right away. Her husband wouldn’t be with her because, selfishly, she’d decided to have me all to herself the first time we met.
    I sighed. My fantasies hadn’t changed much since high school. I picked up a tote bag. Two hundred sixty-five dollars.
    James would think it was ridiculous. He’d paid for college entirely on his own with a few scholarships and grants. He’d had to take off several semesters, working as hard as he could to save money to keep going. He would think it immoral to spend so much on something so trivial.
    I looked at another wall of tote bags and then turned toward the back of the store. A sky blue shoulder bag caught my attention. Three hundred fifty-nine dollars. It had two outside pockets plus several inside.
    “Here’s a wallet that goes with it,” the second clerk said. It was the same color as the tote and cost one hundred twenty-nine dollars. Mama had one that looked a lot like it when I was little, although she bought hers at a flea market.
    I left the store with the Coach shoulder bag and the Coach wallet both secure in a Coach shopping bag. I felt a little better. At least for the moment.
    Twenty-four hours later I was the provider on call for my clinic. I was the youngest practitioner in our center, even though I’d been practicing for almost three years. Two of our clients were in labor at Emanuel Hospital, babies 245 and 246 by morning, God willing.
    This was a much different environment than what I’d witnessed assisting Sophie, but I learned a lot watching her, such as not to take up a lot of space at the birth, and that what was happening was never about me—it was about the baby, and then the mother, and then the father. I learned to simply tell a woman who said she couldn’t go on that she could. I learned that some women scream through childbirth and some women don’t. I learned that the ones who don’t aren’t in any less pain than the ones who do. From Sophie, I learned that giving birth was a natural, normal part of life. It was something I struggled to remember working at Emanuel with its fetal monitors, intrauterine pressure devices, ultrasounds, suction tubes, oxygen lines, IVs, blood transfusions, anesthesiologists, obstetricians, surgeons, and neonatologists.
    I also learned that, even though a birth was never about me, each time I searched for something. A reaction from the mother when she held her baby for the first time. A look from the infant as she searched her mother’s eyes. Acceptance from the father. Joy from the grandmother. After every birth I asked the mother to email me a photograph of her baby. Most of my patients did. I kept the photos on my laptop and sometimes clicked through them, one after another. I’d been a part of each one’s incredible journey into this world.
    When I arrived that Thursday night, a fifteen-year-old was laboring in suite four. I frowned. Another teenage birth. I hadn’t seen her in our practice, which probably meant she hadn’t received much prenatal care. Maybe she’d come to us late. I read the chart. The girl was considering adoption. The baby was three weeks early. I grimaced. A juvenile primigravida—meaning a