The second time I encountered birth I was two years old. That year, my sister wedged her way into the world while I was hushed and entertained by a familiar woman, but I don't remember. The third time, the sounds scared me and the baby was slick and sloppy, covered in mucus: I was sure there was something wrong with her. I was nine years old, and she was my parents' third girl.
I had already made plans with my best friend: we were to be herbalists and midwives together. But those schemes faded when we moved cross country and my relationship with her ended rather abruptly (putting pen to paper wasn't my thing yet.) In my teens and early twenties I forgot about wombs and motherwort as I made room for more sensible dreams like building a house and becoming a cardiologist or writer.
It's been two years since I could really call myself in my "early twenties." Plans come and go, and certain things stay the same: the creation of family moves to the forefront. I had forgotten of my herbal-midwifery dreams until a few months ago, when my feed started to fill with news of birth and breastfeeding and babies. A gift of a midwifery magazine broke me open and the warm fluid of possibility washed over me. I am moving towards my thirties more swiftly than the Canada geese flying towards Georgia and I can do anything. The braxton hicks of this remembered passion startled me again and again - should I consider midwifery school, become a doula, attend a birth as an adult first? Should I consider nurse-midwifery? What if I doula'd in a prison, coaching and advocating for soft births for incarcerated women and families?
As I prepare my body for a pregnancy (don't start knitting, y'all: I'm still years out), my heart slowly builds the tissues and ribs of a career to be birthed someday. A sweet career, all slick and slippery and covered in mucous, with all kinds of heartache and muscle spasms, and surrounded by familiar faces.
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