My first birth as an apprentice midwife flowed as smoothly as the handwriting I used to write it in my birth log.  One of the first Bradley teachers in Colorado Springs, the laboring lady was practiced with her coping mechanisms.  Three women and a man anticipated her every need. Unhurried pushing brought a baby boy onto the planet. He met his family from his mom's breast.  A few minutes later, his dad held him gingerly in a tub of warm water before a blazing fireplace.  The baby seemed to meld with the water.  After an eternity of pure newborn joy, he was gently dried with a sheepskin and returned to his mother's eager arms.  The placenta had been delivered into a bowl carefully selected for the occasion.  Rapture ruled the day.  This was the epitome of natural birth and woman in her glory, circa 1981.   I was convinced it meant I had chosen the right path to become a midwife.  The stars in my eyes were blinding and I didn't even notice them.  Such is the joy of a safe and normal home birth--the feeling it imparts to participants and observers has been described as a birth high.  It lasts for days, sometimes weeks, and it's non-pharmaceutical.  Addiction is swift with birth junkies.

For the laboring woman and the midwife, normal birth is empowering.  It's been over thirty years since I was that birth-blinded apprentice. I meet apprentices now with the same stars in their eyes.  They are naive about the ways life, and death, will educate them.  They desperately want to be midwives and experience birth as often as possible.  My determination to become a homebirth midwife was solidified by that first apprentice birth. 

Only six years earlier, my sole knowledge of midwives had consisted of descriptions in Victorian novels...

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My love affair with handwriting began in first grade. In those last couple weeks of the school year, Mrs. D. walked around the room with a diminishing stack of thin workbooks.  Splat!  Twenty-five times--splat! As each one hit a desk, a communal groan rose louder through the room.  Most of the kids had worked hard for months to master the printed alphabet.  Welcome to Cursive!  I caressed the smooth shininess of the workbook cover and eagerly flipped it open.

 Like every kid, I learned to print first.  It felt so stilted, stopping and starting constantly.  It felt square.  It felt cold.  I never thought it odd that I could "feel" letters, handwriting, and print.  The first page of my new workbook was filled with letters that were pretty--round and plump.  I traced them blissfully.  Little tails hung off of each one in order to connect it smoothly to the next one.  They were warm and welcoming.  I was smitten.  For weeks afterwards, no spare paper could escape my circles, spirals, ovals and curlicues.  My name appeared on the inside cover of every book I owned--in "real writing".  Blank paper was a potential letter to my grandmother, story to be written, or list.  Cursive opened a magical door inside me--a conduit for my thoughts to appear on paper.

The discovery of blank books was utter joy.  They could become journals, diaries, sketchbooks, and the repository of personal knowledge.  A new beginning in my life always required a new blank book.  The selection was critical.  It had to be perfect.  The one that spoke to me felt good, padded and clothbound.  My eyes delighted in its warm, soft earth colors. A litter of kittens play on the cover.  I smile when I see it or hold it.

I eagerly anticipated the special day that would signal my first entry.  I had worked toward this for a few years.  It finally happened.  My heart soared.  I was going to record my "first".  The perfectionist in me wanted this to be my most beautiful handwriting.  Carefully, I poised the pen over the ivory paper.  No mistakes--this is ink.  No blots.    Number one--the numeral was tall and straight, proper with a period after it.  Whew! That flowed onto the page fairly easily.  Now the names--mom and dad.  Check again--no mistakes.  Next line--January 24, 1981, baby name, gender, weight...

It was the first birth that I attended as an apprentice midwife. My Birth Log was born. What I had done was illegal and here I was making a record of it!  I thought about burning it a couple times during the "persecution/prosecution years".  That book has its own story of living in odd places because I couldn't dispose of such an intimate part of my soul.  It contains hundreds of memories, many blissful, some haunting--lots of lessons, insights and kicks in the pants.  I love to leaf through it, remembering women, babies and families.  That particular book is filled now and another one begun, just as carefully selected. I still revel in the flow of the ink onto the paper and find great joy in creating the curves of cursive handwriting.  Although, perfection has escaped me and there are some mistakes and blots...