Blogs by Maryanne Raphael
Birth
7/1/2003 9:00:16 PM
July 1, 2003 I just returned from a trip to Seattle where I visited with Fernando Nicolai, age two. He is very s pecial to me because I was with his mother at the moment of his birth.
When Alex asked me if I would be her birthing partner, I was very pleased but a little frightened. I had never watched a baby be born before. I was present of course at the birth of my son Raphael, but being the presenter of the child is quite different from being a helper. I studied the Lamaze method, often called Natural Childbirth, or Prepared Childbirth. My husband, Lennox was my birthing partner and we did well until the last moments when our son refused to make his entrance and the doctor decided I would need a Caesarian. As they were giving me something to make me unconscious, Lennox whisphered, "Push as hard as you can. You can push the baby out and they won't have to cut you." As everything became black for me, I pushed with all my energies. I looked at the clock right before i went under. It was 11:30 am. My son was born at 11:37. SO actually I only missed the last seven minutes of his coming into this world.
When I woke up, I was greeted with the most beautiful vision of my life, my new born son lying in a crib next to me, sound asleep.
So when I agreed to accompany my friend Alex through this exciting journey, the only experience I had to offer was my own pregnancy and childbirth. Alex was 26 years old, a beautiful tall woman with long lovely black curls and big brown eyes. She had the slender elegant body of a model before her pregnancy.
It was her first baby. She had a long, painful labor. She begged for a spinal.
The delivery was taking place in a modern California hospital where quite a few famous Movie stars had given birth. The delivery room was pleasant with colorful Impressionist paintings on the walls which were a soft pink.
The nurses and doctors were all dressed in bright colored clothes, lavender, light green, yellow, pink, blue.
There was a clean, sterile but light fragrance.
When the doctor gave Alex an injection, she began to hallucinate. "What are you doing in the garden?" she asked.
The doctor was shouting for her to push. "Push, Alex. Push!"
"I can't push," Alex said and her mind went back into the garden. "There are so many people in the garden," she said. "Lisa, how did you get here?"
Lisa was Alex's sister who had died several years before.
"Are you having a tea party?" Alex asked.
"You must push," the doctor screamed. "The baby's heart is slowing down. You must help the baby!"
Alex kept describing the garden and its inhabitants until Fernando popped out, covering me with blood and water in a new baptism.
At the moment of birth, everything in the room stopped. The Life force surrounded us. A silence that created a music of its own. The chattering and running around ended long enough for us to listen to Life.
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More Blogs by Maryanne Raphael
• I Remember Dad - Friday, April 29, 2011
• How to Write a Novel in 3 Days - Friday, April 29, 2011
• How I Stopped Smoking - Friday, April 29, 2011
• Dancing Doris dances still - Wednesday, January 12, 2011
• My Favorite Mother Teresa Story - Tuesday, October 16, 2007
• What Mother Teresa Taught Me - Thursday, October 11, 2007
• Birth - Tuesday, July 01, 2003
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