This Baby Looks Like a Telephone (“Country” 8)

Baby Boy was about to become Big Brother. Here, a little practice with a bunny, supervised by young miss H.

Midwives? Sure. In other parts of Vermont some of those wise women offered to help you birth your baby, and even “mothered the mother,” a trade named “being a doula” in the mothering literature. I’d read about it and it sounded heavenly. Just imagine an older woman who wanted to take care of you, to the point of helping you with your new baby, maybe even washing the dishes sometimes, and coming by with a hot meal. My own mother lived 350 miles away, but even if she’d lived nearby, that wasn’t her way! Sign me up!

But that romantic image wasn’t on tap for Baby Number 2 in our household. Instead, I had a no-nonsense “family doctor” who said she’d be glad to “attend” the birth, with oxygen tanks and other paraphernalia in the trunk of her car in case of emergency. The rest of it was up to Me.

So I gave up one romantic set of images, and painted new ones. Fresh sheets. Specially “baked” ones, wrapped in brown paper, sterile to stretch over the bed. Tiny garments, some still wearable from our three-year-old who now talked way more than the Baby Boy he’d once been, and some passed along by neighbors. Mrs P delivered a pair of tiny blue overalls and a farmer shirt, buttons and all; the young mom of four in the valley passed along faded onesies, their pale yellow knitted fabric tender from wear, soft enough to embrace a newborn. I stacked some…