Security compared with apprehension

I’ve been given more details about new baby Rose (mentioned in my previous blog), who was born in the quietness of the very early hours yesterday. It was the dark hours of the night while the world slept. When the world woke up, people were drawn to see the wonder of new birth. 

It is the grandmother who has told me these little snippets, and she has also told me just a little about her own experiences when she gave birth. The midwife in me can picture it very vividly. The birth of tiny Rose was a very different story from the birth of her grandmother’s first baby.

That baby, decades ago, was the firstborn of a young woman experiencing an emotional storm. The mother, giving birth for the first time, was a doctor who felt that she therefore ought to know what to do, even though this was her firstborn. That baby’s mother wanted (or needed) to keep her parents at a distance: she felt too threatened to allow anyone to come close. How could she begin this journey, even though it was a voyage of love?

That was a baby born into something that sounds quite different from little baby Rose – the one who will be “always beautiful,” as I described yesterday. Baby Rose was born into tranquil water. She was received into an atmosphere where there is a place for a thought-ful new individual… Yes, that was one of grandmother’s words for the miracle who lay in her lap yesterday afternoon. “She was thought-ful,” she said to me later. “And do you know, Jane?” she told me more than asked me. I could hear the tears in her voice. “When her father spoke, that newborn baby even turned her head: she turned towards him, seeking more of what she knew to be familiar. She recognised him. She was looking for him, her eyes wide open…”

Those of us who have never given birth have missed a miracle like no other.