Meanwhile the world goes on

Today I watched my friend's baby being born. It's hard for me to find the words to describe the experience. I found the words when I saw her first child being born. Somehow. Tonight I just do not have them, I don't think.

Once again it was stunning to witness something so different from the portrayal of the delivery room I know from TV and movies. Thankfully, the two births I've witnessed have been free of complications. (I wish all births could be this way.) Because there were no medical issues or problems, everyone was calm and laid back, joking casually and being so relaxed. I know that some people think it's weird that I've been there for this and think that birth is not a spectator sport, but I didn't see myself as a spectator either time. Nor was I participant. I tried to just hide in the corners and take pictures, because taking pictures is what my friend asked me to do. So I took them.

Like last time, I saw her husband holding her head and encouraging her. I saw the blissed out look on her face as it relaxed into relief when the baby let out her first bleaty cry. I saw the baby being weighed and having her footprints taken. I saw the grandparents and the great-grandmother, who -- after confirming that the baby was named after her own mother (the baby's great-great-grandmother, who died in childbirth having her) -- looked at me and said, "My heart is so full."

My heart is full, too. I am not a mother or someone of strong stomach, and though it was calm, the room was also bloody and messy, but somehow the gore faded into the background and all I could see was the mother, the father, the baby, the happiness. What can I even say to try to describe the miracle of birth and life without sounding like some kind of a cliche-spouting asshole? Nothing. Except that it's a miracle.

Thinking about how I saw something slimy come out of my friend that ended up being a living, breathing baby is heavy. So heavy that I'm going to have to eat some miniature Reese's cups and watch American Idol now.

And I'll post the poem I posted about this baby's older sister when she was born almost three years ago because I think it's one of the most beautiful poems I know. And because she is a beautiful baby.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver