Birth Vigil

We are on birth vigil.

Yesterday I lay on the exam table as the midwife, a veteran of thousands of births, made ready to examine me. Instead, I asked a question about death, and she told me about the deaths she has attended.

Yes, she said, it's the same feeling of great transition.

I asked if she thought people dying go to the same place that people being born come from. She thought so.

There's a real physical effort to dying, she said, as if someone is pushing their way across something. Bit by bit, with enormous effort, they stop and rest, and then they carry on, gradually making their way. To the other shore, she said.

She is not, to my knowledge, a Buddhist.

You attend a dying person like you attend a birthing woman. You cannot do the work for them, but you can coach them and help them remember their intention. In both cases, they must open, and they must let go.

Breathing is so automatic, she said. It takes great will for a person to stop.

It takes great will to be born, too. The twelve-linked chain of causation culminates there--at birth, the apex of successive waves of desire and becoming--before it dives again into the next cycle of drives and wants.

Why are we born? Some basic desire draws us forth. It is all terrifying. And beautiful. Not entirely positive, in this world of dwindling resources. And yet, it’s just exactly As It Is.

The midwife turns at last to my body, and feels around. Things are in good shape, she says. Pelvic instability, which prevented me from walking earlier, is a predictor of easy labor: the bones are able to move apart. The baby-gate is nicely thinned and barely cracked open. The child’s head is low, ready to go. If everything were like this in a week, when the pregnancy is officially at term, the midwife would be pleased.

So we are ready. The baby is a good size. Some of the little clothes in the newborn lineup will never fit. The diapers are stacked; the cosleeper nestles next to our bed. Nothing to do but wait and invite the miracle.