Talking About My Baby. Margot Early

response made her feel worse things—that she’d teased Dan and somehow let down every woman at the hospital. She wondered how Isaac had reacted to her performance with his brother, if he saw her as Dan did—that she viewed things as “black and white.” That she was a hotheaded “crusader” for a trivial cause?

      Damn it, it wasn’t a trivial cause, and she’d been trying to do the right thing.

      “Okay,” she told Laura as she carried the baby toward the maternity unit, “so maybe I’m a little folksy and backward. I can live with that.”

      

      DAN McCREA HAD BEATEN her to the labor and delivery suite, and he and the anesthesiologist were busy trying to talk Millie Rand into an epidural. “You know, I just think you’ll be more comfortable if you try the epidural, Millie. Maybe dilate faster.”

      Tara wanted to step in, to say, This woman wants a natural childbirth. No drugs, no epidural, Too black and white for you, Dr. McCrea?

      Francesca said, for perhaps the tenth time, “My client has expressed her desire for natural childbirth.”

      “Francesca, what if I can’t do it? I never have before.”

      This was Millie Rand’s third child; the other two were staying with a friend. Her husband had gone to childbirth classes with her. Compared to what Tara had seen daily in Sagrado, this birth promised to be a piece of cake. If the boys would just get out of the room.

      Millie’s adrenaline must be pumping now. Who could have a baby with someone terrifying her? And all this chitchat is stimulating her neocortex, just when she needs one of the older parts of her brain to take over. Time to get primal. Why hadn’t she had this conversation with Dan when she had the chance? As her buddy Star in Sagrado always said, Don’t fight—engage.

      Millie’s husband put in, “Millie, I know what you’ve been talking about since you knew you were pregnant, and an epidural wasn’t it.”

      “She’s in pain,” Dan exclaimed.

      Tara tried to evoke some feeling of compassion for Dan McCrea. A flicker was as good as it got. The man sent her straight into radical midwife mode; Ivy called it “RMM,” as in “Tara, you’re in RMM.” So be it. Dan, I bet your brother was born at home and you weren’t. Your mother must have been drugged, because you can’t tolerate pain now. Circumcision wouldn’t have helped, either.

      There. She felt better. The man suffered from hospital birth.

      “You’re five centimeters dilated, Millie,” Francesca encouraged. “You’re doing great. How about walking some?”

      Millie’s husband gave her an encouraging smile, and she began to climb out of bed, just as another contraction came. She moaned through it, and Francesca said, “That’s right. Keep your mouth loose.”

      “I’m going to order a monitor, Millie. I’ll feel better about your baby if we know how it’s doing all the time,” said Dan.

      “I can use the fetoscope, Dr. McCrea.”

      “We don’t want a monitor.” Millie’s husband supported his wife’s body as she labored.

      Tara watched his tenderness for only a moment. It was all she could stand before unwanted emotions bubbled up. Just a man to love her like that, to want her to have his children. Down on the border, she didn’t see this—just women alone, women like her.

      She paused in the doorway. As the doctors in the birthing suite pressed their case, two people approached from the end of the hall.

      Isaac. And Pilar, her musical laughter preceding her. Tara’s heart thudded, and Laura stirred against her, then began to cry.

      Isaac’s gaze avoided Tara’s as he peered in the door of the playroom, and the nurse continued down the hall without him.

      “Back to work.” Squeezing Tara’s arm affectionately, Pilar sailed past, into the birthing suite.

      Laura fussed, rooting for the nearest breast. There were too many people in the room, anyway, another labor-wrecker. Tara left. Noting Isaac’s new coolness, she hurried by him, to sit in the waiting area and nurse. She wished she didn’t care what Isaac McCrea thought of her. She didn’t care.

      Isaac checked on his daughter. Danielle was fast asleep, her braids against the green nylon of his North Face bag. He could hear a woman moaning in labor. Francesca Walcott’s voice came from a room several doors down, the birthing suite. “You’re doing wonderfully. Millie. You’re such a good mom.”

      Sometime, Isaac hoped to ask Francesca how her daughter had gotten so screwed up, but he reminded himself it was 1:00 a.m. And what had Tara really done except come on to an attractive man and talk too much about homebirth?

      There were things about her he liked. Her simple clothes—corduroys, T-shirts and sweaters. Her nursing that baby. And the quality he’d once found in all beings—nobility of spirit.

      Leaving Danielle, Isaac went out to the waiting room, found Tara and joined her.

      He sat forward in the next seat, long forearms on long thigh bones.

      Laura had not been nursing well, crying most of the time. Tara wondered if maybe the baby wasn’t really hungry. Ignoring Isaac, she moved the tube away and put Laura to her nipple. As the baby latched on, she felt a strange tingling, new and unfamiliar. She was lactating! Her breasts were producing milk. Probably just drops, but... “This is incredible! I think I have milk.” And much sooner than she’d ever dreamed.

      Isaac felt the miracle, shared her pleasure. Inducing lactaction wasn’t easy. But his breath was shallow, his stomach muscles tight, as she switched the baby to the other breast, reached under her shirt and sweater, and brought out a sticky drop of milk on her finger, then licked it off. He said finally, “When is the mother going to take over?”

      “What?” Tara recalled what she’d told him, that she was raising Laura for Julia. She’s not going to take over. “I’m not sure.” Why the sudden urge to level with him, to blurt the truth?

      The appearance of her own mother, obviously steaming, forestalled any confession.

      But Laura was still nursing, and Isaac lingered. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said. “About babysitting. We could talk about it more.”

      Could we talk about marriage? Oh, Tara, get real. “Yes. Yes to everything.”

      His eyes never left her face.

      Knowing Francesca wouldn’t say what was on her mind in front of Isaac, Tara used her finger to break Laura’s contact with her nipple. “Okay, pumpkin. Let’s go see your grandma.”

      “Grandma?”

      Tara flushed. “Sometimes I forget she’s not mine.” She had brought Laura’s car seat inside, and she settled and strapped the newborn in it.

      When she stood and lifted the car seat, he stood, too, but Tara didn’t raise her eyes again until she reached her mother.

      

      FRANCESCA SPOKE IN a low voice to Tara. “If I have to see another woman deliberately frightened by those men...” Francesca knew she was overstating the point. It was hard for physicians like Dan McCrea to see women in labor and not want to relieve their pain. Dan wasn’t a drug-pusher, he was just trying to help, in the way he believed was best.

      But it’s just unnecessary interference. If Millie had asked for pain relief, had asked for a monitor... Francesca had seen a few women stuck at seven centimeters dilate to ten in an hour on an epidural. But most of the time she felt it slowed labor.

      If only obstetricians and midwives could truly coordinate their efforts. But the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said homebirth was unsafe. All over the country, midwives were attending homebirths with no physician backup—because there was none to be found. Ivy’s situation in West Virginia was unusual; her