Judy Baer - Oh, Baby!

That was another thing about Hank that made me know we’d never work out as a couple. He thought pigs belonged in pigpens in the state of Iowa and nowhere else on the planet. He’s going to have a bad shock when he sees his first pig farm in Mississippi.

He also bought into all the clichés and fallacious stigmas about pigs, and wouldn’t be convinced that the term “dirty as a pig” is pure falsehood. Pigs are very clean animals if not forced to live in untended stys. In fact, even under those conditions, a pig will use only one corner of the pigpen as a toilet. It’s where they’re forced to live, not the pigs themselves, that is to blame for the phrase “stink like a pig.”

Pigs have no odor. I tried to make Hank smell Geranium once to find that out for himself, but he refused. Yet another chink in our relationship.

The other public relations problem pigs have is that they like to roll in the mud. They don’t like being warm and can actually get sunburned if they’re exposed too much. Therefore they roll in the mud to cool off and keep the sun off their skin. Does anyone criticize a woman for using sunblock? I think not.

The telephone rang just as Hildy and I were settling in for the night. It was Mandie, a young single mother whose parents had just hired me to be her doula. She was crying.

“Molly?”

“What is it, honey?”

“I’m so scared. I went to the doctor today, and he says that I could give birth any time now. I don’t want to give birth, Molly.” She hiccuped tearfully. “I want it to stop!”

It’s a little late for that now. Tactfully I didn’t point that out.

“Things are going to be fine,” I assured her. “You’re a healthy young woman. You have a wonderful doctor to care for you, and I’m here for you, too.”

“I’m not a woman, I’m just a kid!”

Truer words were never spoken. Babies having babies. I see far too much of it and it breaks my heart. But it’s not my place to judge. I’m called to be salt and light to these girls, Jesus embodied in me.

“How do you feel?” I asked. “Are you having pain?”

“No. I just keep thinking…”

“How about if I talk you through some deep-breathing exercises? It might be time to give your brain a rest.”

I stayed on the line until Mandie was calmer and ready to sleep.

Hildy snuffled wetly and shifted so that her legs were rigid, managing to take up two-thirds of the mattress. I could hear Geranium rooting around in her pen for nonexistent truffles and the tick of my grandparents’ old clock in the living room. All was right with the world.

The telephone rang at 8:00 a.m. I tried to ignore it and let my answering machine pick up, but then I remembered Mandie. She might be in labor.

“Hullo?” I snuffled into the phone, my voice scratchy from disuse.

“Wake up, sleepyhead! It’s play day!” Lissy sounded annoyingly chipper.

Saturdays are always play days for Lissy. She tries to pack an entire week’s worth of fun into eight or ten hours and always wants company doing it—me.

“I might have a baby coming today.”

“Then we should go soon so we can get a few hours in before you have to be at work.”

“I need to do laundry,” I reminded her. “I’ve had a busy week.”

“Nonsense. We’ll just buy you new clothes. If you can’t go two or three weeks without washing, you’re definitely short.”

“I thought we were going to a museum one day.”

“Fine, be cerebral and dull. How about the Science Museum? That’s my speed. They’ve got lots of dinosaurs.”

“Do we need to borrow a child to go there?”

“Nah. We’ll just pretend ours are already there, running around. That place is always stuffed with kids. You shop with me, I’ll go to the museum with you. Deal?”

Why fight it? Lissy is a lot like Geranium and Hildy. It rarely pays to argue with hardheaded females.

Of course Lissy had her way and I didn’t. We went shopping.

Lissy pulled a navy-blue suit off the rack and waved it under my nose. “How about this? This would be great for church and it would subdue that red hair of yours.”

“Why on earth would I want to do that?” I held up a broomstick skirt in all the colors of the rainbow. “What do you think of this?”

“It’s a bad accident in the crayon factory. Too many colors.”

I held it up and looked at myself in the mirror. My red hair was fighting against the bond of the braid I’d woven, and so a wild cloud of rusty red framed my face. The bright teal shirt I wore accented the giddy colors in the skirt.

“If that skirt could talk, it would say—” Lissy covered her ears “—too loud, turn down the volume!”

That helped me to make up my mind. I handed it to a hovering clerk. “I’ll take it.”

“She’s a free spirit,” Lissy muttered grimly, as if in apology for my fashion blunder. “I’ve been trying to tame her but it is like domesticating the wind.”

“I think it’s lovely,” the clerk assured me. “Distinctive.”

“See?” I hissed when the woman moved away. “Distinctive. Like me.”

“I can’t shop with you any longer,” Lissy announced. “I’m having a color overload. Let’s get something to eat.”

That was fine with me. I’d rather eat than shop any day.

After we ordered lunch, Lissy sat back into the padded booth and studied me.

“How’s The Project going?”

The Project. My big idea, my dream.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that as a kindergarten teacher I used to like things orderly in my classroom. Everything had a place and that’s where we kept it. Although I actually thrive in chaos at home—my arty side coming out, I suppose—I was very different at school, the only teacher at school who had a Rolodex and a tickle file to remind me of upcoming events. Things make sense to me when they’re organized into groups. Snow pants go in closets, blocks go with blocks and crayons go into the crayon bins.

And doulas, I think, would fit nicely into an agency where they are available and easy to find. When patients start asking questions about birthing assistants or coaches, I believe a doctor should be able to hand them a business card with the name of my big idea—Birthing Buddies—as I fondly refer to it, and allow women to research dozens of doulas before they pick the one best suited for them.

My biggest hurdle and one of the most important parts of the dream is to be an independent agency that has office space and headquarters within the facility. Just being under the Bradshaw Medical roof would be an amazing way to let people know we exist. They rent space to the people with coffee and snack carts on the main floor. Why not me?

Why they should oppose it, I can’t imagine. Labors are shorter by twenty-five percent, and the use of C-sections, epidurals, forceps and medication drop significantly when doulas are involved. We also help the bonding process between mother and baby. When a laboring mother has someone mothering her, things simply go more smoothly.

“It’s going to be an uphill climb. Worse, now that Dr. Reynolds is at the hospital. I suspect he will be opposed to a doula program, especially one offered in conjunction with the birthing classes with which I’m involved.”

“Why Bradshaw General? Why not an independent office somewhere?”

“Because a gift was left to the hospital for the express benefit of encouraging them to enhance a doula and midwife program.”

“I heard something about that. Why? What happened?”

“Some wealthy grandparents watched their daughter breeze through her labor and delivery and credited it all to her doula.”

“And that would be you?” Lissy asked suspiciously. “Why didn’t you tell me until now? That’s a huge affirmation to doulas everywhere.”