1.  Gestation

 

The stupendous climax

After a long gathering of forces:

The womb, this flexible metamorphosis,

Imbued with a living being to care for,

Struggles and grows, grows enormous.

Life given room to grow within my life.

Not as a craft, fitting limb to limb,

But opening out and accepting;

Offering strength; offering energy, food.

In this mystery, this communion;

My food transformed, as my body gives it unsparingly,

builds bone, puts flesh on muscle.

 

Another life; the presence of another,

In an unspoken, passive internal maturing,

Without the power of hand or eye;

Intuitive, body whole synthesis of action;

In going, so that the innermost is growing,

burgeoning in the darkness.

 

Turning and restless in her cradle

My child bestirs herself.

I watch my belly heave and flop

Tight around her contour.

My child is resting in a textbook curve,

Oblique, a classic case, head down.

Her toes catch on my ribs, she kicks my side.

I rest, and all my resting gives her strength.

My body makes her, weaving in the dark.

My bones nourish her. My blood breathes her.

I bear her, lovely burden, and I rest.

 

I gave myself and opened to my love,

Who made me his and filled me with delight.

So now springs up this inner, love's response.

And I between them, rocked in love's strong arms,

Cradle my love, the love I bear my love.

 

That life can come from violence I know,

But this life moves like secret flakes of snow

Magic upon the darkness

 

2.  Restinq

The Maternity Ward is a series of pitfalls.

For example the sleeping pills.

They bring me in to rest but put me among the labourers.

Then bring me drugs to help me sleep.

When I refuse the pills they warn:

"Tonight will be noisy, you will need drugs to sleep."

I see the trap and avoid it.

To rest is not necessarily to sleep.

To sleep drugged is not restful.

To stay till Thursday resting, on the consultant's orders.

Is easier than flouting his authority.

In a system where authority is the ruling principle.

An order to induce will come from the same authority,

Nothing will induce me to agree, I say,

But my agreement will not be requested.

I am not expected to have an opinion.

 

3.  Inductions.

Pain is the measure that the nurses understand.

Pain where? How frequent? Has the pain begun?

Pain gives them rights to act upon your body.

They qualify for pain.

Girls in gingham with a purpose in life,

Pupils in a kindly school,

Administering bottles and tubes,

Drops counted with precision.

Till the pain starts.

If baby's ready and the date seems right

They are licenced to induce the pain

Whether the body wills it or not.

 

4.  The nurses

 

Pethedin, the lotus flower,

They grant like a prized gift,

A reward for long labour.

Gas and air, least threatening,

You can take or leave, use it as you will.

These are hazards of the journey, mark them well.

Do not rely on nurses as signposts to success.

They are not aware of your part.

They are the principle actors in their own comedy.

Which takes the form of marshalling a procession,

Keeping it in good order,

Sending it along the road.

They do not understand that each traveller has her own journey,

To them we are a jostling human river: Patient, passive, carried.

 

Just as a child floats twigs along the stream

And if one catches on the bank,

Nudges it out again into the central current;

So they frown, when pains dont come to order,

With bottles and tubes they nudge the body back to work.

Then when the pain is strongest,

Come with a needle, ministering angels,

And take away the body's self control.

 

5.  The Labourers.

 

Some enter the lists with gritted teeth,

Seething in hidden pain.

Determined to be silent, till the sharp,

Lost cries of agony are wrung from them

Then sobbing in the sheets.

Others have some routine of breathing hard,

And work their way through wave on wave

Like slaves turning a mill, a plodding strength

Driving them through.

And intermittently

They ask the Sister, How much longer now?

 

The gypsy ones, confounding all the rules,

Rushed in with smiling faces, talking calmly.

The waters broke while shopping, on a bus.

The nurses seem disordered. All the fuss

Is so much nonsense about something small.

The head is out! They rush her down the hall,

Panting a little, not in pain at all,

And twin girls drop like puppies into eager hands,

Happy to make aquaintance with the world.