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

first-time pregnancy—and early. She certainly wasn’t the youngest I’d seen, but still my heartbeat quickened.
    I pushed up the sleeves of my lab coat and headed down the hall, my blue clogs clicking against the shiny linoleum. The labor nurse stepped out of the doorway as I reached the suite.
    “How are things going?” I asked.
    “Good. She’s a trooper. Already dilated to seven.”
    “Any support?”
    The nurse nodded. “Her mom is with her. They make a good team.”
    My heart softened a little.
    “I’ll be back in a little bit.” The nurse hurried across the hall.
    I pushed through the door and introduced myself. The girl’s name was Tonya, and she stood by the edge of the bed. Even at full term she looked small, except for her belly, which jutted straight out like a shelf. She wore her dark hair in a high ponytail with a pink ribbon, and her fingernails were painted fuchsia. Her mother, Tammy, shook my hand and met my eyes, assuring me that things were going well. They had taken a birthing class together and were prepared. Tonya rolled her eyes, but then a contraction gripped her. “This stinks,” she muttered, grasping the headboard with one hand.
    “You’re doing great, honey,” Tammy cooed. Taking note of the circles under her eyes and the rumpled state of her flowered blouse and brown slacks, I knew she had been at this for a while, helping her daughter through the pain.
    Tonya moaned deeply as her contraction intensified.
    The first delivery I ever saw had been atypically peaceful and serene, a mainstream mother who had chosen to use a midwife because of her non-mainstream ideas about birthing. When the woman’s husband rubbed her back or stroked her hair, she told him thank you. Every time a contraction came, she leaned against him on their antique bed in their old farmhouse, endured it in silence, and smiled when it was over. When it was time to push, she closed her eyes, and after only two contractions out popped a baby girl, eyes wide, taking it all in. After the father cut the cord, Sophie wiped the baby off, wrapped her in a flannel blanket, and handed her over to the eager parents. They cuddled her together, and then mother and child melted back into the bed as one. Soon, the father brought their two-year-old son upstairs, where the boy snuggled with his mom and sister, patting both of their heads with his chubby hands. I recalled that I spent most of the afternoon standing in the bedroom doorway trying not to cry. Sophie remembers me helping the mother walk to the shower, stripping the bed, starting the laundry, and making toast with jam for the two-year-old.
    That was the first. After that came many more, though of course their reasons for using a midwife varied. There were modest Mennonite mothers, Hispanic migrant moms, poor mamas without insurance, and a few like that first mother who simply wanted to give birth in their own home, on their own terms.
    In my senior year of high school, I took anatomy and a medical career prep class, planning to be a labor and delivery nurse. But when I read in our textbook about the world of the nurse-midwife, I knew that was what I wanted.
    Once Tonya’s contraction came to an end, I told mother and daughter both that I would be back in a while to check on how things were progressing. Stepping into the hall, I moved toward the room of my second mother in labor, a patient of mine, Jane Hirsch. I had delivered Jane’s first baby, a boy named Jackson, almost three years before.
Baby number 9
. Jackson now went to a co-op preschool, and Jane worked part time in a law practice that specialized in nonprofits. This time around I had really enjoyed doing her prenatal visits, watching the interactions between mother and son. Though dad often seemed a bit preoccupied with his work, Jane was a hip and fun and devoted mom, the kind I wanted to be someday.
    “How are you?” she asked as I entered the room. Jane’s long hair was twisted up on her head, her face