Now, I know what you’re thinking: your baby is the best new person of the year! While this is most definitely true — goodness knows I’m just about as proud as can be when everyone tells me what beautiful babies I make — I have to sing the praises of another person who came into my life this year. Debbie was simply a name thrown out by the women in my local ICAN chapter at the start of the year. Debbie is about an hour’s drive from me, so she wasn’t the first midwife I interviewed. Luckily the first midwives I interviewed didn’t want to touch me with a ten-foot pole, and even more luckily the midwife who trained Debbie during her residency happened to be at the clinic I go to for well-woman care when I went to at least try and initiate some sort of prenatal care with anyone who could at least do so. (It may have been my third go-around past the 6 week mark, but that didn’t mean I felt like I could go it alone like some women do.) That midwife reassured me that she’d trust Debbie with the delivery of her grandchildren, so I went straight home and left her a voicemail. She called back within 15 minutes and set up our first appointment.
We met in mid-May, and she made sure to do all the vitals — and find the heartbeat on the fetal doppler since I was extremely anxious to hear it. See, I have this thing about hearing the heartbeat that makes me feel like, “ahh, it’s alive, all is well.” I suppose that comes with the territory after you’ve had a few miscarriages, even if the last pregnancy resulted in a full-term, healthy baby girl. She was very nice, she gave me some encouragement that she had given birth naturally to two 9lbers herself, and we made plans for when the next appointment would be.
She really showed how wonderful of a woman she is by making the trip up to me for all the prenatal appointments and taking me to the consultation to get my sign-off. She really never brought up issues about my prior c-sections or things like that — it was noted in my chart, sure, but it wasn’t a constant theme of my prenatal care. She treated me like a human being, like a normal pregnant woman (“because you are a normal pregnant woman!” she said to me once). Every other care provider I’ve ever dealt with always fussed over the fact that I’ve got this scar on my uterus. Somehow that scar on my uterus made me less of a person to nearly everyone else in the world. Not Debbie. Debbie could see past that horrible reminder of what happened to me when I was still just barely an adult, a reminder that I was treated as an ignorant child who deserved to be sliced right before dinner time. She could see that I was still a woman with a strong will and determination. She didn’t judge me based on my past naïveté. She judged me for my character and personality, for the faith and desire I had. I wasn’t some terrifying leper. I was just a normal pregnant woman.
On November 3rd, she helped us welcome our sweet little pumpkin into the world. She told me how proud she was of me and how she can’t help sharing my story with others (she’s got my full permission to do so as I’m so proud to be on the encouraging end of the spectrum now). She has helped us in so many ways, and I would love to ramble on all about it. Instead, I will wrap this up by saying I’m so incredibly glad I decided to interview. I’m so glad I was encouraged to give her a call and look past that hour’s distance. Long distance worked out for me before (in fact, today marks 9 years since I met my husband online), and it worked out for me again. While she can’t stop bursting with joy about how beautiful my HBA2C was, I can’t stop bursting with joy about how wonderful Debbie is as both a midwife and a human being. She’s my heroine of 2009!
Yes, the woman who brought your baby into the world is DEFINITELY a herine. Good call. And I’m so thrilled that you were able to birth him the way you wanted despite the obstacles.