Midwives

A little before she turned eight, Connie started accompanying Sibyl to her deliveries. Sibyl would take Connie along when Connie’s father, Rand, was away at work. The first baby Connie saw delivered at home was Emily, the daughter of Lori and David Pine. Connie remembers the sight of a hugely pregnant Lori lying in bed, naked under her sheet. Though David suggested that Connie could be sent away to their uncle’s, where his own older children were staying, Lori thought it was fine for Connie to stick around. Connie was not scarred by the sights and sounds of the nine-hour-long labor, but vignettes from it have been branded in her memory, such as the memory of Lori sobbing in pain, Sibyl wiping the blood from Lori, and Sibyl’s gloved fingers examining Lori’s dilation. Emily was born at 5:45 am, fulfilling Sibyl’s promise to Lori that her baby would come before breakfast.

Because midwifery was her mother’s profession, women’s bodies were not a taboo subject in the Danforth house. While describing a birth to her friends and their parents, Connie would spontaneously use terms like “placenta”; for Connie, “vulva” was the name of a body part like any other. However, by the time she turned 14, she had begun to realize that such talk discomfited many people. The good thing was that, though some conservative people stopped their children from visiting the Danforth house because of their misconceptions about Sibyl’s profession, the parents of Connie’s friends did not feel the same way, even the stiff McKennas, parents of Connie’s best friend, Rollie.

Connie prefaces this chapter, as she does most chapters in the book, with an excerpt from Sibyl’s midwife journals. In the entry in this chapter, Sibyl wonders why a sperm is described as penetrating an egg, as if in an act of aggression. Better terms for the process of fertilization would be “meet, or merge, or just groove together” (19).

Connie notes how, in her own training as a doctor, she has heard countless physicians describe labor and childbirth as dangerous. Doctors always say that when things derail during a delivery, they can deteriorate so rapidly that there is little time for intervention. Of course, this was also the view of the doctors who served as the prosecution’s witnesses during Sibyl’s trial. Sibyl had always been at loggerheads with most of the doctors in their small town of Reddington, Vermont. In the 1970s and 1980s in the US, doctors believed in an interventionist approach to childbirth and did not deliver at home for fear of malpractice suits. “Lay” or freelance midwives like Sibyl were the only ones willing to help with home births. Doctors always tried to prove Sibyl wrong by citing statistics, but she showed them that maternal and child mortality rates were similar across home-birth and clinical settings.

Connie attests that Sibyl hardly had any cases of stillbirth because of her cautious approach to midwifery. Though Sibyl believed every woman deserved to labor in the peace and comfort of her own home, she refused to take on cases in which she believed medical intervention would be needed, such as women with diabetes or those expecting twins. If things started going south during a delivery, Sibyl would promptly call for an ambulance. Only 4% of Sibyl’s clients ever needed to go to a hospital. Connie has chosen to start Sibyl’s stories with these details rather than the night of Charlotte’s death because the story belongs to Connie, too.

The starting point of the story is 18 months before Charlotte’s death, when Connie is 12. Connie is infatuated with Tom Corts, the town’s bad boy, who is a couple of years her senior. In March 1980, the streets of Reddington are coated with mud because of the sludge created by the melting snow. Rollie and Connie are at Gove Hill, a high spot relatively untouched by the mud, taking turns riding Rollie’s horse, Witch Grass. However, before Connie’s turn, Sibyl pulls up in her large station wagon, telling Connie that she will be out for the evening, as her client, Wanda Burnham, is approaching labor. Connie is to go home and make dinner for herself and Rand. A disappointed Connie does not argue with her mother, giving her a perfunctory kiss at her request as they bid each other goodbye.

Before heading home, Connie goes to a nearby grocery store where she knows Tom may be hanging out with his friends. Though Tom seems to ignore Connie at first, he comes up to her after his friends have left. The two teenagers chat, Tom shyly asking Connie for a kiss before they part. The words of his request are exactly the same as Sibyl’s, making Connie feel the kiss is preordained. The two share a chaste, sweet kiss, and eight months later, they become boyfriend and girlfriend.

Sibyl was named after her grandmother, who in turn was named after a healer her missionary parents met in Santiago, Mexico. The parents returned to their home state, Massachusetts, after the drowning of Paul, the baby brother of the older Sibyl. Unable to stay in Massachusetts, the family then settled permanently in Vermont. Soon after, they distanced themselves from religion.

A couple of generations later, the younger Sibyl grew up to be a “full-fledged […] no-holds-barred, Liberation News Service, peace-love-and-tie-dye hippie” (34). Sibyl enrolled in Mount Holyoke College but soon developed a distaste for institutions and authority. She took a break two years in and joined a group of artists and writers in a community northeast of Montpelier. It was here that Sibyl met Rand, Connie’s father, an illustrator who would later become an architect.

It was around this time that Sibyl discovered her vocation in midwifery. When Abigail, Sibyl’s friend, went into labor two weeks before her due date, everyone had been smoking marijuana, so no one could drive to the hospital. The men went out to call for an ambulance while Sibyl and the other women tended to Abigail. As it quickly became clear that the baby was coming fast, Sibyl took charge of the situation, washing her hands and gathering clean washcloths and hot water. As if guided by an instinct, Sibyl knew what to do, manually examining Abigail’s birth canal to see how far along the baby had progressed. Sibyl delivered the baby successfully, feeling a euphoria unlike any other. By the time she was pregnant with Connie a few months later, Sibyl had decided to make midwifery her profession. Since becoming a registered nurse-midwife would involve returning to college for a degree—difficult while she was raising a child—Sibyl chose the lay path.

Sibyl’s line of work involved her being away from home for several hours at a stretch, often in the evenings and nights. This meant that Rand spent much more time with Connie than was usual for fathers in the 1970s and 1980s. Although Rand was an attentive, involved father, Connie recalls him feeling overwhelmed by his childminding duties and arguing with Sibyl over the late hours she kept—for instance, questioning why Sibyl needed to stay an extra few hours after the birth to make the mother comfortable. The fights would lead to Rand drinking heavily, which in turn led to uglier outbursts. However, Rand and Sibyl always reconciled, going upstairs to make love, the sound of their creaking bed oddly comforting to Connie.

When Connie is 13, it is Rand who drives her and Rollie to the home of Charlotte and Asa Bedford to babysit their seven-year-old son, Jared, nicknamed “Foogie.” This is the first time the Danforths meet the Bedfords. Asa, a Quaker pastor, has moved to Vermont recently and is one of those adults who doesn’t mind being silly around kids. While Asa is exuberant, Charlotte is skinny and extremely pale. After the Bedfords leave for the evening, Connie and Rollie watch Foogie as he runs through the sprinklers and discuss boys, plotting ways for Connie to get in touch with Tom. On the return of the Bedfords, Charlotte asks Connie if her mother is really a midwife. Charlotte becomes pregnant with her second child soon afterward.

In her journal entry, Sibyl reflects that the mothers she has helped include painters, musicians, and even a few journalists and schoolteachers, but no bankers, lawyers, or doctors. For some reason, the latter groups prefer hospitals.

Charlotte goes into labor on the night of March 13, 1981. Charlotte calls Sibyl on the phone, and Sibyl heads over to the Bedfords’ home in her station wagon, asking her new assistant, Anne, to head there as well. Connie stays at home with Rand while Foogie is sent over to the house of one of Asa’s parishioners. Sibyl expects Charlotte’s labor to be easy since she knows Charlotte had a relatively easy time delivering Foogie. However, the first stage of Charlotte’s labor lasts 12 hours, longer than is usual for a second delivery. Around midnight, Sibyl breaks Charlotte’s water to speed things up, an intervention Anne will later claim was unnecessary during Sibyl’s trial.

It begins to rain after midnight, the icy storm bringing down all phone lines from Reddington. Charlotte continues to labor, weeping in pain since the baby is “sunny-side up,” its face turned to Charlotte’s pubic bone. Each time the baby pushes against the sacrum, the pain intensifies. However, this is not a cause for concern since plenty of babies twist into the usual position as they descend into the birth canal. Asa, next to Charlotte, prays aloud for a speedy delivery. Matters take a turn for the worse when Charlotte begins to bleed copiously and her blood pressure drops. Sibyl determines that Charlotte needs to go to the hospital, but when she picks up the phone to call the rescue squad, she discovers that the lines are dead. Sibyl tells Charlotte to take a break from pushing as she goes out to start her station wagon.

The ground outside is hard and slippery with the frost and rain. Sibyl slips several times trying to get to her car, bruising and cutting her legs on the ice. Later, her attorney, Stephen Hastings, will have the injuries photographed to show the jury how earnestly Sibyl tried to get Charlotte to the hospital. Sibyl manages to get into the car, but it stalls in a snowbank, making driving impossible. Sibyl rushes back inside, knowing she has no choice but to deliver the baby herself. In the time she’s been away, Charlotte has recovered some of her strength. The bleeding has slowed to a trickle, and her blood pressure is up. She even tells Sibyl that she is fine.

Infused with fresh hope, Sibyl makes Charlotte sit up with her back to Asa’s chest, Asa helping her keep her bent legs open. As Charlotte pushes on each contraction, Anne and Sibyl encourage her to give a little more. It is past four o’clock when the baby descends down the ischial spines (one of the hip bones, the narrowest and most difficult part of the birth canal), indicating that only the last bit of the journey is left. However, this view will be heavily contested during Sibyl’s trial. Charlotte continues to push with all her might, her energy sapping. At 6:10 am, Charlotte shoots up abruptly, her eyes rolling back, and collapses. Sibyl is convinced that she has suffered a cerebral aneurysm or stroke because of the prolonged pushing.

As Charlotte goes into respiratory distress, Sibyl gives her CPR. Sibyl will later recall giving Charlotte eight or nine cycles of resuscitation, but Asa will remember four or five. When Charlotte cannot be revived, Sibyl asks Asa to bring her the sharpest knife in the house. Anne and Asa race to the kitchen and bring back a large steak knife. Sibyl tells Asa that Charlotte is not coming back. As Asa hugs his wife, Sibyl tells him that they have no time and that the baby must be brought out immediately. It is this moment that will become the fulcrum of the prosecution’s case: Sibyl does not ask the grieving husband for permission before cutting into the wife. Anne will testify that Sibyl did not even check the baby’s heartbeat with a fetoscope to see if it was alive.

Asa is confused about what Sibyl wants. Sibyl tells him that she has to perform an emergency surgery to save his child, which she is all the more determined to do having “failed” to save the mother. Sibyl cuts into Charlotte’s skin and muscle until she gets to the distended uterus. Since the baby is so close to the surface, Sibyl makes a tiny nick here, pulls apart the uterus with her hands, and, finding the baby’s feet, pulls it out. Miraculously, the baby is alive. Sibyl cleans the boy up and hands him to his father. Anne will later testify that Charlotte’s blood sprang out in geyser-like spurts when Sibyl cut into her skin, a sign that Charlotte’s heart was still beating.