Chris Bohjalian - Midwives

Anne said at the trial she had never heard as much love in a man's voice as she did in Asa Bedford's that early morning.

My mother was at once comforted and moved. She no longer feared placental abruption. "Well," she said simply, "let's get that little baby out of you." It was, according to the note that she scribbled, three minutes after two in the morning.

My mother sat Charlotte up on the bed between Asa's legs and had her lean against him once more: Her back was against his chest, and his back, in turn, was against the headboard. Asa's arms could reach the inside of his wife's thighs and hold her legs apart as she pushed, so the baby would have room to descend. Charlotte's head and neck and spine were aligned, and she sat upon a firm throw pillow my mother had recently purchased at a tag sale, then washed, so her bottom was a couple of inches above the mattress.

My mother did not believe the baby had spun during its descent. Consequently, she anticipated the child would emerge facing the ceiling, instead of the ground, and the back of its head would continue causing Charlotte pain as it made its final journey through her pelvis.

Charlotte had labored once before and she had attended some of my mother's birthing classes, so she knew how to breathe and push. She knew how to ride a second-stage contraction, and make the most of each one. She knew when to hold air inside her and push, and when to relax and take shallow, light breaths.

For an hour Charlotte pushed through each contraction, with my mother and Asa and Anne encouraging her to push an extra second or two each time:

"You can do it, a little more, a little more, a little more, a little more!"

"You're doing fine, just fine! Perfect!"

"'Nother second, 'nother second, 'nother second!"

"My, oh my, you're great, Charlotte, the best, the best!"

"You can do this, you're doin' great, doin' great, doin' great. Doing great!"

"Come on, come on, come on, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon!"

I saw my mother deliver enough babies to know she was an inspiring coach and a mesmerizingly energetic cheerleader. And I also saw the way a majority of fathers would allow my mother to provide most of the verbal confidence. My mother was just so good at it.

But who said what between two A.M. and six A.M. would matter greatly to the State, and they insisted-and my mother and her attorney never denied-that Asa and Anne said most of the "You're doing fines," while my mother said most of the "Little mores" and "'Nother seconds."

Charlotte would close her eyes and clench her teeth as she pushed, and the lines on her face extending out to her temples would grow sharp. Like all mothers about to deliver a baby, Charlotte strained and struggled and no doubt worked as hard as she possibly could. Sometimes her face grew blue when my mother pressed her to bear down even harder.

"'Nother second, 'nother second, 'nother second!"

"My, oh my, you're great, Charlotte, the best, the best!"

After Charlotte had been pushing for almost a full hour, my mother had her rest for twenty minutes. Charlotte was again experiencing the fear that she wasn't going to be able to push this baby out, and she was scared. My mother reassured her that the baby was doing fine, and so was she.

The baby's head, my mother said in court, had made progress during that hour, although the autopsy would be inconclusive. The medical examiner could never be sure how far the baby had descended, and it was certainly impossible for him to say with confidence where it had been at three or four or five in the morning.

At three-fifteen, Charlotte resumed pushing. With her jaw locked tight but her lips parted, she continued trying to push her baby into the world. Sometimes her head would be back against Asa's shoulder, and sometimes her chin would fall down toward her own chest.

"You can do it, a little more, a little more, a little more, a little more!"

"You're doing fine, just fine! Perfect!"

She tried, my mother said, as hard as any woman she had ever seen. The surges sweeping through Charlotte's body were long, and my mother persuaded her to make the most of each peak.

And between them Charlotte would catch her breath, and then she would try again.

"Come on, come on, come on, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon!"

A few minutes past four in the morning, my mother had Charlotte rest a second time. She could see Charlotte was exhausted, and she could see Charlotte's confidence was failing.

There are two general medical definitions for prolonged second-stage labor: a second stage that has lasted two and a half hours, and a second stage that has continued a full hour without further descent of the head.

My mother insisted that the baby had indeed descended during Charlotte's second effort. By four in the morning, she said later, the child had negotiated the ischial spines and much of the pelvic outlet: It had merely to navigate the pubic bone and then it would crown.

Near four-thirty the urge to push became overwhelming, and Charlotte told my mother and her husband that she wanted to try once more. And so she did. She pushed as hard as she could, she pushed with all of the strength she could find, she pushed so hard that when she would finally exhale, she would grunt like a professional tennis player at the moment her racket is slamming ferociously into the ball on a baseline backhand.

For brief seconds at the height of Charlotte's pushing, my mother could see tufts of the child's dark hair, but the baby always seemed to slip back.

Did my mother consider giving up, and attempting what she knew was probably impossible-navigating the icy roads that separated them from the hospital? My mother said that she did, although she never suggested such a thing to Anne. But even Asa testified that between five and six o'clock in the morning, my mother limped to the bedroom window and pulled the gauzy drapes away to look outside.

"Was that a sand truck I heard?" she asked once in that hour, a remark that her attorney argued was proof she was daydreaming longingly of a cesarean delivery performed by a doctor in Newport.

But from the Bedfords' bedroom window, the driveway still glistened like glass, and the rain and ice had continued to fall. My mother's car still sat by the snowbank, a grim reminder of what the roads were like, and she had only to glance down at the cuts on the palms of her hands to remember how difficult it was to move on foot on that ground.

And, Stephen Hastings pointed out, my mother had not actually heard a sand truck: No town trucks had tried venturing onto the roads in or around Lawson between two-fifteen and six-thirty in the morning. And even at six-thirty, Lawson road crew member Graham Tuttle would testify, the roads were "just plain awful. I drove right on top of the yellow line, sanding and scraping just a single lane. I didn't dare stay on my side of the road, or I'd have wound up in a ditch."

Obviously Charlotte had no choice but to try and push the baby out in her bedroom, and so while my mother may have wished with all her heart that they could go to the hospital, she never suggested the idea to Asa. She never broached the idea of a cesarean section at North Country Hospital, because she knew they had no real hope of getting there.

Besides, my mother really believed Charlotte was making progress. The baby was close, she thought. It might be just one more contraction and determined push away.

And so Charlotte tried. She never pushed again for very long, she never worked through wave after wave of contractions. But as the sun was rising somewhere high above the rows of clouds bringing ice and rain to their corner of Vermont, rising somewhere so far behind the curtains of black and gray that the skies wouldn't lighten until close to seven in the morning that day, Charlotte used all the strength she could muster to try and push her baby past the pubic bone.