Snippet 2

Several days ago I watched a dramatization of birth on Call the Midwife, a PBS series set in post-war London in the fifties and sixties. The conditions in this working class section of the city were the antithesis of the prosperity we were enjoying in the US. This young woman in the series is delivering her baby at home comforted and aided by two midwives, residents of a convent. One held her hand and wiped her brow, assuring her all was going well.  The other midwife who was guiding the birth told the woman what a great job she was doing and instructed her when to breathe and when to push.

What a brilliant idea the British creators had for this series to bring us to where it all begins. Too often we witness bedside dramas of characters leaving the world.  How refreshing to be invited into delivery rooms, modest homes of London women. Hospitalization was reserved for critical situations. Ironically, the time set for this series wasn’t so far from my own son's birth in the early 70s.

I was admitted to the hospital at midnight and settled into a small dark room where I would spend the entire night alone, frightened, separated from my husband. A nurse with a flashlight would check in with me routinely, but she rarely gave me words of comfort as I cried throughout the night. The obstetrician visited me late the following morning to tell me he would deliver the baby surgically as soon as the operating room was ready. 

Joy is the last emotion we associate with operating rooms, but for me the dark, lonely night had come to an end. I was now in the hands of the anesthesiologist, resident, and obstetrician. The resident took my hands and asked me to sit up. His smile revealed his beautiful bright white teeth against his blue-black skin. He put his thick strong arms around me and whispered in my ear, "Now sit still; don't move." My spine was punctured, yet I swallowed his embrace like water on a parched throat. It was his embrace that brought me through to motherhood in an otherwise sterile cold place.

Human touch is our earliest memory, the one we seek throughout our lives. While the British series shows us a slice of London's working class and poor families after the war with its strong community bonds, for me, it was a wonderful reminder that human touch remains our greatest treasure.