Between her, me and the baby; a midwife

The thing with pregnancy is that I have suddenly stepped into a matriarchal culture. I don’t mean that in a negative sense. I mean it in the sense that I have stepped into a woman’s world. It has a somewhat unnerving aspect to it. Being the people we are, we have been getting all the books we can and most of them seldom mention the Father and what he should be doing. I’m aware of and have read Gordon Churchill’s book, which was great but about the American experience which differs considerably from the New Zealand experience.

The first thing we needed to do was find a mid wife. So we rang Sunita, Sicily’s sister who is a midwife practising in Hawkes Bay. She didn’t know anyone but nonetheless passed on all sorts of midwifery voodoo, like telling us how pregnant we were. Then we got a phone call soon after from Sicily’s Ma. I think she had felt a disturbance in the force and was ringing to check why we were disturbing it. Sicily told her the disturbance had come from discovering there was a monster in a lair and that lair was inside Sicily’s tummy. I put my mouth on it and whispered “What’s going on in there?”.

No reply tho Sicily laughed. The ears come later. Now that Linda knew I had to ring my Mother and that’s the second midwife. Now my Mother was very excited about the news as she had been teased somewhat mercilessly by her sisters that she would only be a Grandmother to dogs.
“excellent.” she said. “Good work, excellent.” She said.
“Yes well, I do what I can.” I said, beaming under light of parental praise. The problem was she kept oscillating between being an excited Grandmama and a good pragmatic midwife with over thirty years experience.
“She’ll be finding she’s got tender breasts.” She said after consulting her midwifery voodoo charts. There were various other comments along that line and I realised I was in a matriarchal world that was soon to be full of talks of tender breasts (mmmm.... tender breasts of Sicily.... oops, this is public right?), varicose vulvas, spotting and so forth.

Now both Sunita and my Mother have agreed to be at the birth but we still needed a midwife. I decided it would be my job.
“I’ll find us a midwife, after all I found a full wife I should be able to find a mid one.”

I rang all the midwives in the phonebook and left messages. A woman from Birthworks rang back, obviously a senior midwife to tell us she would pass us on to one of their midwives.
“But first,” She said over the phone “I will tell you a little about our philosophy...” and she proceeded to give me a run down.
“I don’t mean to be rude but can I interrupt you?” I interrupted.
“Sure” she said.
“My mother is a midwife, I know what you’re saying.”
This excited her and she decided she would take us. Unfortunately she was away in February and didn’t want to risk it. Later that night Bridget rang. Sicily answered and they talked and we had an appointment for a couple of weeks time. Mission successful, I had found a midwife.