Touching Birth

I was 7 ½ when I watched as she brought my brother into the world. I’d insisted on taking classes that would teach me how to prepare for my mom’s labor and put a diaper on my Cabbage Patch doll. At the end of it I got a certificate and clearance to be in the room with her.

Even after those classes I wasn’t prepared for the change in my mother. Laying flat on her back she screamed and swore, which wasn’t so uncommon but the tone of it was different. I wanted to calm her down, make her feel better, make it end. And I couldn’t. Everything felt so out of control and I remember leaving the room several times to go and cry on my grandmother’s shoulder. But I always came back. Always took a deep breath and stood by my mother’s side, occasionally glancing into the full length mirror at her feet that reflected back a confusing mush of reds, purple-blues and lines I couldn’t make sense of.

I remember her fighting fiercely in that birth, kicking the nurse who tried to reinsert the iv to induce labor even though my mother was already pushing, punching my dad with a steady fist to his nose for watching the super bowl instead of her. There was wailing, flailing limbs and registers of voice I’d never heard before. I was there for all of it. And when the time came the doctor asked me if I wanted to hold the receiving blanket and deliver my brother. So with a set of skilled hands beneath mine I stood between my mothers legs and watched as my brother pushed into the world. I remember the chaos that surrounded me, the doctors and the fear that I would drop him, but before I could even grasp the possibility of doubt, he was there and my hands were the first to touch him.