At the end of that hour, somehow I know what I must do. After a contraction, I get up and go out to the other room, where my other friends are waiting their turns to support me. I hear music…my favorite CD, the one that made Isaac leap within me so many times previously. The music alone lifts my spirit a bit, and I feel my energy begin to come back.
I tell my friends, “I need to know that I can do this. I need you to tell me that I can do this.” The women begin to tell me the words I must hear right now, my soul like gauze, as permeable to encouragement as to despair.
“You can do it.”
“You are so strong…you’ve prepared so well for this day.”
“You are made to do this.”
“You are doing it.”
I cling to their strength, the rope that keeps me from going over the edge of the precipice. This support gets me through until the wee hours of the morning. It is three thirty when the midwife tells me that I can push when I feel the urge. At four thirty, I begin to push. It takes me time to feel the results of my pushing, and my inner cynic is still going strong when they tell me, “You’re doing great…you’re making great progress…your baby will be here by dawn.” I cannot afford to be disappointed, and so I do not take hope. I take the waves as they come, staying in the moment, and I continue to sleep for a few minutes between them.
They become more intense, more primal. He is beginning to emerge, this little boy who decides that the first thing the world will see of him is his testicles and his butt…balls-first, he begins to enter the world, coming out, then retreating, coming out, then retreating. I cannot believe, still, that I am going to manage to push an entire baby out of my body. The urge to push is irrepressible, and I feel my tissues stretching to let his body out. I am afraid I will tear…and I cry. “Will I tear?” I ask the midwife. She tells me I will not. I am reduced to being a baby myself. I cry out for my mother…I haven’t cried out for her since I was a little girl.
