Two: With Women
The word midwife means 'with woman', a fact that landed heavily with me some time into my midwifery training, when I realised with a huge exhale of relief, that in becoming a midwife, I had surrounded myself with the women who I most needed to be with me.
These women were brave, funny and almost unshockable. They were feminists and fearless leaders, compassionate carers, stoic warrior women armed with gloves, tea and patience. They loved a drink, never said no to a carbohydrate, and most importantly of all, between shifts could communicate across a dance floor through only the medium of ridiculous moves and terrible miming of half known lyrics. These women were my tribe.
A decade earlier, my awkward teenage years had been spent at an all girls school in which I was endlessly attempted to force my metaphorical square corners into a round hole, losing bits of myself with every effort. Self conscious and self effacing, abandoning myself for approval of all the girls who seemed to effortlessly just understand how to fit in. And yet in becoming a midwife, a career almost entirely defined by one's relationship with other women, I had finally found a perfectly square hole I sank into with relief.
Together, we started to understand the language of birth, and the complexities of holding women through it. We became a family, with its own memories and shorthand. We found each other sobbing in laundry cupboards, commiserated at our various failures to learn basic examination techniques, celebrated major milestones together and hid cans of diet coke in each others bike baskets as we swapped over on shifts.
The last time we gathered, over a year ago now, coronavirus was a story on the news as we cooked breakfast together in the kitchen of a house we shared for the weekend. Our kids ran around and our husbands sat chatting around the breakfast table. 'Should I be worried about this coronavirus thing?' one of my friends asked, as she casually flipped a pancake. 'Yes, you should', we all chimed. The conversation turned to someone's latest shift, and we were back into the storytelling, sharing the experiences only they could truly understand.
Through night shifts and nightmare labours, through drunken nights out and half drunk cups of tea, through pushing, panting, parting, parenthood and pandemic. They are forever my midwives, my 'with women' and I cannot wait to gather with them when all this is over.