A book can be a mother

Waking before as the sun rises and sleeping as it sets, the day takes on a new rhythm. It is fuller somehow, as if a person’s sense of time is actually connected to the circling of the sun. We forget that with electricity. I worked the evening shift last night. There was no power so we caught babies by candlelight. The halls of the hospital were quiet and laboring women moaned and cast long shadows across the room. I had to pee and my torch burnt out along the way. I walked slowly, sliding along the walls and using an internal sense of direction to guide me to the pit latrine. I had a moment of panic as I feared a mouse running across my feet while I squatted down, but it passed in a wave and I returned to the ward relieved.

What is medicine without intuition?
Can one be a true healer without also being intuitive?
I don’t mean psychic. I mean awake. Finding one’s way in the dark. Perceiving that which bubbles under the surface. Listening for that which is not spoken, that which cannot be put into words. Remaining open enough to take in another’s energy and feed it back, transformed.

Is the doctor or midwife or psychiatrist or natropath or nutritionist or massage therapist or witch, who heals you best, intuitive to your needs? Do you feel heard? Special? Understood? I read a study once that determined that 97% of people who sue their doctors in malpractice suits did not feel heard.

Healers who know how to listen are more effective. Healers who can listen both to what is spoken and what is unspoken are magical.

Here medicine is by the book. It’s an old book, but it’s a book. The book is like missionary position sex under a fluorescent lamp, totally dry and no room for improvisation… or intuition. I find myself constantly pushing up against the book, trying to turn the lights off, to listen and to move beyond the edges, to expose each woman as her own story, her own body, her own unique set of needs. It’s a dance to maintain balance; to keep relationships healthy and the narrative ribbon of dialogue moving back and forth. I turn the light switch off, my colleague flips it back on. I say the book can change, she says it’s a book, the print is permanent. I say try, she says why. We laugh and share a meal, chalk it up to cultural difference and connect over a mutual distaste for Miranda grape soda.

My young friend Becky is still in labor. Intuitively, I believe it’s because she has nowhere to go once she delivers. I think she is holding on as long as she can. The walls of the hospital offer shelter and some small amount of attention. She cried hysterically again today and called out for her mommy. Aimee and I sat with her, massaging feet with essential oils and satiating tears with small offerings of chocolate and tea. I imagined the comfort of having a mother while you make the transition into motherhood, and the utter feeling of loss if she were not there as witness, protector, and most of all, knowledge. The midwives feel my friend should go for a cesarean, because the book says she has labored for too long. I shudder at the thought unless the fetus or mother is in extreme distress. While the fetal heart rate is strong and the membranes still intact, I continue to advocate for rest, food and love to move things along at a snails pace.

Aimee witnessed a C section yesterday. I stayed on the ward while she went down with an obstructed labor to the ‘Theater’. She filmed it and showed it to me afterwards. The doctors ended up ‘extracting’ (their words) two ‘undetected’ (their words) twins. In order to do this they performed a three hour long surgery with a gas mask, and came close to killing the mother, slicing her open vertically from pubic bone to breast, shredding the womb and performing a tubal ligation without her permission. In Uganda, if a woman has more than five babies a doctor is allowed to perform a tubal ligation during cesarean. She bled so much she is still not conscious. This ‘by the book’ performance is supposed to save lives.

I do not mean to spend so much time in critique. Nor do I mean to privilege my instincts over those of others. I cannot imagine what it takes to have survived this conflict and still maintain a daily sense of togetherness. Perhaps surviving in the bush, living by gut and instinct, moving through the darkness of not knowing who to trust, where to sleep, how to protect your body, makes the comfort of a ‘book’ a necessary coping mechanism. It is comforting to have something that ‘knows’, something you don’t have to question because it is right. Like a mother. A book can be a mother.

There is so much strength here, so much determination, so much willingness, so much so much.

This afternoon I lay on a blanket in the grass and held baby Peace who is now three weeks old. She sucked on her fingers and I read a story by Isabel Allende. The sun felt comforting and consistent, an old friend. Something I know, trust, and can refer back to. A mother.