Birthing Babies

August 17, 1994 Essaouira

I didn’t expect to help with two births when I visited the hospital this afternoon. Not only did I witness, I held a woman’s legs to help her push. I watched from that position as they cut her vagina with a pair of scissors, and watched the head slip out between the flowing of blood, followed by the huge placenta they call the sister.

The woman had just come from the bled and the whole time after giving birth, she repeated over and over that she would have died if she had it there. In labor she’d scream at the top of her lungs, faint, wake up, scream, faint, wake up, scream...

Within fifteen minutes I was holding the next woman’s hand as she breathed. Doing it myself, I got real dizzy. She smiled in the best way a woman giving birth could smile, but then she started panting and fading out. Suddenly I got pushed out of the way by a nurse. 

The nurse got over the woman and started pushing down on her stomach to get the baby out. They induced contractions because something was wrong. I stood at the woman’s feet as the head was pulled out, all blue, with the cord wrapped twice around its neck. A rush of green liquid poured out with the baby.

I followed the nurse with the baby into the other room where they laid the baby down. They stuck a hose through his nose, down to his lungs, sucking all the liquid out. Then they started slapping it around, giving it CPR. It was still not breathing and floppy like a rag doll. 

They injected something into his umbilical cord, massaged him some more, turned him upside down by the feet and slapped him. They put him down and fed him more breaths, massaging him, and slowly he started to breath. In irregular gasps at first as the color started coming back to him....... He still wasn’t moving so they turned him upside down again and slapped him. He gasped and let out a cry. So did I. So did probably the black and white cat on the floor with its kitten.

I will be in Essaouira until September 4th. It is the windy city of Morocco, famous for windsurfing and a popular hangout for Beatniks across the world. Hendrix wrote Castles Made Of Sand about a rock off the coast here. He even tried to buy the village over the hill. This city is full of slacker-like Austinites mixed with fully veiled women, in either all black or all white. Because they all look like they come from Austin. I’m surprised to hear the Spanish, German, French, and Danish.