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"Happy Birthday Baby"

We walked up and down the hospital's halls, my young husband And I. Walking and waiting and aching. Finally I was effaced And they wheeled me to delivery while my husband worried in the Waiting room. I folded into a fetal position praying the man To hurry the needle.

While I was there--like that--all 180 pounds of me hunched over My enormous pregancy, I saw water wash out of me. No time for Etiquette. He pulled me back on a floating cloud and my leaden Legs were fixed in stirrups. Swaddled like the Virgin Mary--I Watched. Watched in the mirror over their heads.

He put in an instrument and spooned out a blood-dark head. A Hand shoved a cannula in the head's mouth and suctioned out the Human cry. The rest of the rubbery body spilled out and was Plopped on my lowered-abdomen. (Out of the way of the entrails Buckling and shrinking inside me.) He pulled handfuls of the Enriched membrane while he pressed on my pelvis. An orange-- Being peeled from the inside out.

She was wrapped in a warm blanket and placed in my left arm. We Were both calm then. I said softly, "Hello, Tootsie, I'm your Mother." She knew what I meant as tears dripped from my smile.

copyright 3/19/86 by Dale Marie Harmon permission to publish this poem as is on website http://www.childbirth.org/articles/stories/birth.html only. No other rights or permissions granted.

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