Good Fortune

My mother is a midwife and has delivered all of my babies at home. After delivering his head, usually the end of it all, my mom warned, “this is getting serious.” I was flipped over, my legs pumped in the Gaskin Maneuver—yes, developed by Ina May of the original Farm in Tennessee.

I used to help babysit hundreds of kids at midwifery conventions in which she was the keynote speaker. A teen in short, polyester dresses, platform shoes, yanked from my classes to tend natural fibers, bird-seed-cooking eating kids. Women wearing Birkenstocks took turns at the mic—women with hairier legs than even my Dad. I swore I’d never own a pair of those shoes and that I’d always shave my legs.

Growing up in the eighties, I wasn’t fond of being called weird or having random converted school-buses parked in front of our house.

The neighborhood kids used to come over and eat peanut-butter sandwiches (mom bought number ten cans) and sit in the living room while the sun was shining outside in order to thumb through Midwifery Today issues, chock full of naked hippies—men, women and children--at various states of birthing.

I saw in her eyes I must push for all I was worth--shoulder dystocia.

I’ve a broken back. To be exact, spondylolisthesis—a forward slip at L-5/S-1, pelvic damage, and a free floating tailbone. Two days after Valentine’s Day I gave birth to my largest baby, at ten pounds! My back, pain, like a turkey carcass being ripped apart for soup, the pars interarticularis snapping like a wishbone.

Photo: creative commons