Talking About My Baby

She changed the infant’s sodden diaper. Precious little legs. Cuddle her in a blanket. But Laura cried all the way to the kitchen. Francesca had called some other new mothers earlier that day, and the freezer and refrigerator were stocked with fresh milk. It would keep for 48 hours in the fridge, two to four weeks in the freezer.

“I’ll hold her while you warm the milk and set up.”

Tara hadn’t even noticed her mother entering the kitchen. I’m dead on my feet. But it seemed important to manage alone.

As Isaac did.

“I’m fine.”

Francesca was already reaching for the baby.

“Mom, you really don’t have—”

“Don’t be so stubborn, Tara. You don’t need to prove anything to me.”

Why did people always think she was trying to prove something? She’d been told the same thing before—by Danny, especially. What are you trying to prove, Tara?

Danny, Dan McCrea, Danielle McCrea. The little girl must be named for her uncle.

Reluctantly, Tara let her mother hold Laura while she put the kettle on for fenugreek tea. Maybe she didn’t have anything to prove to Francesca, but she had much to prove to herself, especially where Laura was concerned.

Her mother turned in a slow circle, Laura against her shoulder. Gently, Francesca patted the crying newborn’s back. “Tara, how are you going to handle her records? You can’t just pretend this child dropped from space.”

“I’ll homeschool her.” Ready to nurse, Tara took the baby from her mother and settled in a chair at the kitchen table. The immaculate house contrasted with the chaos at Isaac’s.

“Eventually, someone will want to see a birth certificate.” Francesca perched on the edge of another chair. Tara rarely saw her mother relax, rarely saw her sit back and just be. Even now, she seemed poised to spring up, to try to make Tara more comfortable.

But Francesca was right about Laura. “It’ll work out,” Tara promised. Laura’s soft cheek was curved, her little mouth suckling hard. Long ago, Tara had adopted the philosophy that things work out. She’d been jailed in one Third World country for defending the poor and in another for—bad luck. She never spoke of those times, seldom looked back.

Look forward, Tara.

Laura’s birth certificate, birth certificate... Oh, good grief! Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? “You could write a birth certificate.”

“That would be fraud.”

Tara heard. Francesca hadn’t said, Not on your life. She hadn’t refused.

“It’s the perfect solution, Mom.”

“No. I won’t do it. I wouldn’t even consider it, Tara.”

She had considered it. Tara knew but didn’t argue. Instead she began singing softly. “Golden slumbers kiss your eyes. Smiles await you when you rise. Sleep, pretty baby, do not cry....”

Francesca had rocked Tara to that song in Hawaii thirty years ago. Tara had been born in a homemade birthing tub beside a dolphin lagoon. She’d been born with the sac intact over her head, a symbol of good luck and strength. Francesca knew her daughter’s strength—but good luck?

More than a decade ago, Tara had survived a Chilean prison. Two years later, it was Mexico. In the United States she’d been arrested for protesting a nuclear waste dump and for protecting a palm grove in Hawaii from bulldozers. Francesca could scarcely conceive of what her daughter had survived in those instances. Especially Chile. But Tara’s eyes always shone, overflowing with enthusiasm, never betraying fear.

Francesca was afraid on her behalf. Always.

Tara never talked. She’d married Danny Graine, a contractor, and Danny had left her for her partner, for a fellow midwife. Francesca knew Tara couldn’t be held wholly innocent in the desertion. But all Francesca’s sympathies rested with her daughter.

Tara and Ivy. Besides midwifery, her vocation, they were her life. With Ivy, it was a little different. Ivy had joined their family as an adult. Brain damage, permanent amnesia, had robbed her of her past. She’d found it now. But back when Tara had suggested adopting Ivy, it had seemed natural. Francesca loved Ivy as a daughter. She is my daughter, like Tara and unlike Tara. Ivy’s levelheadedness was a counterpoint to Tara’s Charlie Marcus ways.

Ivy lived in West Virginia now. She was reunited with the husband and daughter she hadn’t been able to remember.

Fake a birth certificate for little Laura, precious Laura with her mouth latched so hard to Tara’s nipple? Francesca had seen her daughter wince while nursing Laura Estrella. I’ve already helped her round up more milk. So many generous mothers willing to help. Was the birth certificate so much more?

Yes.

And it was just what Charlie would have suggested. No interest whatsoever in obeying the law. Francesca abided by rules and regulations, had seldom found it difficult to do otherwise.

But Tara...

Nursing a child someone had abandoned in the back seat of her car. Holding inside the consequences of flouting the law in other lands.

I don’t want her hurt again. Not by another Danny Graine. Not by authorities who would take little Laura from her arms.

There must be a way to make the adoption legal. First, a home study. But where was Tara’s home? She couldn’t be legally employed as a midwife in Colorado until she became licensed. Maybe it was time to convince her to take that step, if not for her own sake then for Laura’s. “Tara, the law has changed. It’ll come into effect next year.”

“What law?” But Tara knew. Midwives would no longer be required to qualify as nurses. Instead, they’d have to verify that they’d attended a certain number of live births and take a test... “Oh, I know about it.” Just as she knew there were eight or nine different titles for midwives, titles with little meaning to the consumer. Professionally, she was direct-entry, meaning she’d come into midwifery without pursuing nursing school. By choice, she held no credentials.

As far as Tara was concerned, midwife would do.

Matrona.

“As of January, you can be licensed. It’s just a matter of paperwork and passing the test.”

“We’ve covered this one, Mom. No test, no certification. Sleep, pretty baby, do not cry...”

“Why not? Tara, the certification process will be nothing to you.”

“This isn’t about me. Birth is a natural process, and women should be able to have their babies however and with absolutely whomever they choose. That is a basic human right, and that is why I’ll never certify—to uphold that right. Not my rights. The rights of mothers and fathers who want homebirths. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is out to take away their rights.”

“Becoming licensed won’t keep you from homebirths.”

“You want me to go on? We could talk about how, in some states, CNMs can’t attend homebirths and licensed midwives can, and how Colorado is becoming one of those states—”

“This isn’t about me, it’s about you.” Francesca was a certified nurse-midwife. “And no one’s asked you to become a CNM.”

“Okay, me. I’m against regulating midwifery. Word of mouth is the best regulation there is. Word of mouth and community, something this country needs to relearn.”

Francesca kept her voice even. “I can’t let you do homebirths out of this house, Tara, or under my business name. It compromises my reputation, my position in this community. And I refuse to risk your going to jail when you have that child to raise.”

“Ah, we’re getting somewhere,” Tara told Laura. “She admits you’re mine.”

Francesca sighed.

She might as well have said, You’re just like your father, which Tara had always known wasn’t really an insult, just something to be accepted. Like her parents’ divorce, her father’s desertions.

“Tara, I don’t see how you can legally adopt her. You’re single. You’re poor. You’re unemployed—”

“And I’ve just moved to the perfect place for finding a rich husband.” She tried to banish Isaac McCrea from her mind. Isaac and his family, their cats and their mice.

Francesca looked thoughtful. “I suppose if you fell in love with the right man, the two of you could adopt. -Not that I’d favor marrying for money—”

The phone rang.

Millie Rand was due. This must be it.

“A birth,” exclaimed Tara. All thoughts of marriage and adoption fled. While Francesca answered the phone, Tara gathered up Laura and filled a new bag for the feeder. She would accompany her mother to the hospital, though she wouldn’t be allowed to assist as a midwife—with or without certification. But she could help in other ways. She eavesdropped on the conversation, and when Francesca got off the phone, Tara said, “Fill me in. I’m coming along.”

Her mother’s lips pressed shut. Shaking her head with a rueful smile, she held Tara’s head between her hands and said, “When are you going to make things easier?”

“That’s why I’m here, Mom!”

Her mother’s sigh could have reached the back of a stadium.

FRANCESCA’S CLIENT AND her family hadn’t yet arrived when Tara and her mother reached the hospital’s small labor and delivery suite. Francesca and Tara and Ivy, her sister, had provided the toys and books for the children’s corner with the help of former clients whose children had outgrown the toys.

Laura was restless, so Tara walked her through the hospital. Isaac McCrea rounded a corner from the cafeteria, and they both started, between giant oil paintings of elk in the aspens.

“Hello, Tara.” Uncomfortable, Isaac recalled Tara’s visit to the chalet—as he had every hour since she’d left.

“I hope your emergency had a good outcome.”

His emergency had been a battered wife. He and two ER nurses had talked her into going to the shelter in Montrose. It had taken four hours. Danielle, who’d begged to come to the hospital with him, was asleep on the floor of the playroom on the maternity unit; the boys were at home. He’d been about to collect his daughter, but suddenly he was in no hurry.

He nodded ambiguously as his brother, Dan, paused beside him in the hallway.

“Well, well, well. Look who’s back.”

Tara held Laura toward Isaac. “Help me out, doc.”

A second later, he was holding the infant while Tara embraced Dan, exclaiming, “Hi, Dr. McCrea! The other Dr. McCrea,” she added, beaming as though at a long-lost friend.

Better friends than enemies, Tara told herself. If her sister, Ivy, had been there, Ivy would have accused her of insincerity. Tara and Dan weren’t friends; friendly adversaries was the best you could call it. But Tara believed you caught more flies with honey than vinegar. The midwives and Dan McCrea had often clashed over a patient’s care; no doubt it would happen again tonight, at Millie Rand’s birth.

Dan eyed the baby in Isaac’s arms and addressed Tara. “Surely, that’s not yours?” His gaze swept up and down her body.

Subduing an inner twinge of hurt, rising to it, Tara grinned. “Surely, you’re not implying that it couldn’t be.”

“No one would imply that,” Isaac cut in—and wished he hadn’t.

Tara’s expression was...mollified. He wanted her in a purely physical way; every man she met must want her. He couldn’t forget about her nursing that child who wasn’t hers. He couldn’t forget her.

Tara saw a pregnant woman passing in the hall, her hand linked through her husband’s arm. Was that Francesca’s client? Trembling, she reached for Laura, carefully taking the infant from Isaac’s arms.

It felt more intimate to him than it should.

“Thanks, doc. I’d better go.”

Dan’s eyes had followed Tara’s—then drifted to her ass. “In that case, I better go, too, to oversee this delivery.”

“My mother will have this labor and delivery well under control.”

“But I love to watch you in action.”

Isaac’s throat knotted. His brother’s girlfriend of five years had moved out last winter. Still, the word “unprofessional” came to mind.

She invited it She can deal with it.

Yet the situation violated some sanctity of mother and child—woman and child. Tara held that infant like it was her own. Checking the baby’s face, tucking the blanket around her, her own eyes so involved in the child. Vulnerable.

“You know, I’m hungry,” she murmured. “I think I’ll get something to eat.” She started in Isaac’s direction, toward the cafeteria, then tossed a glance at his brother. “Join me?”

A wolf smile creased Dan’s face. “I think I can spare the time.”

They like each other. Fine. Isaac was glad to write her off.

Then she said, “And you?”

“Sure.” So much for writing her off, Isaac.

Now, Dan was looking him up and down. “Damn, you’re tall.”

They loaded their trays scantily, no one genuinely hungry, and found a table at the side of the room. Realizing they’d forgotten napkins, Isaac went after them, and Dan smiled at Tara over a cup of coffee. “You know and I know that you’re really trying to keep me out of the delivery room.”

“The birthing suite.” Tara tried some iceberg lettuce, the hospital’s finest. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“You’re going to fail. You know your problem, Tara? And I mean you and—” with his fingers, he indicated quotation marks “—‘midwives’ like you. Everything is black and white.”

As her jaw dropped, Isaac returned to the table. When he sat down, his leg touched hers, and they both scooted back their chairs.

“In your eyes,” Dan continued, “all obstetricians are bad, and we all want to burn you alive. This isn’t the Dark Ages. You’re the ones who want to stay in the dark. Why won’t you let us guide you instead? What gets you so riled up about technology?”

Tara felt sweat droplets gathering on her forehead. Birth was sacred. What could she say about a roomful of people staring at the Broncos instead of a woman having a baby right before their eyes? How could she make Daniel McCrea, M.D., see the difference between a vibrant, powerful woman, laboring beautifully in the peace of her own home, and a woman on an epidural, plodding indifferently through the birth of her child? These were the images she saw. And others—from her time in a Chilean hospital. In Chile, like the U.S., traditional midwifery was all but destroyed. It needed a comeback.

But all she said was, “Because technology, in my experience, leads to unnecessary cesarean sections.” Not to mention that you can’t catch a baby without causing genital mutilation.

Well, okay, that was putting it strongly; everyone had to do episiotomies in certain circumstances. But every time, Dan?

Isaac sipped his coffee, a Quaker silence keeping him out of the fray. He pictured births in Rwanda. Went far away, into himself. No, think about something else. Mice. When it turned cold, they’d flocked inside, and the local vet had given him two homeless cats. But there were too many mice for his cats to kill. He needed exterminators.

“Do you know that some women prefer C-sections? And some women prefer painless births.”

Try vacuuming once in a while, Isaac. If the mice have nothing to eat... Right. Orkin. Pest control. That was the answer.

Tara wanted to scream. Dan was right. And probably some women had great memories of the baby arriving at halftime, and who was she to say that wasn’t best? Hey, the Broncos were great. Besides, how many times had Francesca and Ivy reminded her not to judge one birth experience over another? Again and again, they’d said, It’s not your birth, Tara.

Oh, she hated hospitals almost as much as jails—and for similar reasons. “I acknowledge the necessity for some cesareans, and I support the right of women who want painless births to have them, Dr. McCrea. But I also support the right of women who want homebirths to have homebirths.”

“Don’t get me started.” With an uneasy glance at Isaac, Dan changed the subject. “Tell me about this little tyke. You seem more suited to motherhood than the role of crusader. Especially, since you’re still not legal.”

Dan McCrea’s eyes gleamed, and Tara knew it was all about power, about establishing power over her. Good luck. Dan McCrea wasn’t scary, and she would stall him here in this cafeteria as long as she could and count on his wanting to get some sleep before office hours tomorrow.

Homebirth. Isaac had tired of the company before his coffee cooled to drinkable. He got up. “I’ll see you later.”

Both seemed surprised.

But he’d barely left the table before his brother said, “You know, Tara, there’s such a thing as being too natural. Too earthy. Too Eastern. Taoist, Zen, whatever you are. Ultimately, too folksy and backward. You’re all of the above.”

Isaac shook his head as he left the cafeteria. Homebirth. Have at her, Dan.

HE LEFT! DAN McCREA finally left.

After forty-five minutes of innuendo, a litany of the latest peaks he’d bagged, and a genuine invitation to dinner—no chance—he finally said, “Well, Tara, till next time,” and departed...for the hospital doors.

Folksy and backward. She’d thought it was a compliment before he said that.

Waving at Pilar Garcia, a labor and delivery nurse, who had just filled a tray, Tara rose to speak to her old friend.

Pilar glanced at Laura, then toward the doors. “Not a new romance?”

“No. I was trying to keep Millie Rand from an unnecessary C-section. An epidural, anyway. How’s she doing?”

“Just fine.” Pilar’s expression was mildly disapproving. Of Tara’s methods? Again, her eyes drifted to the baby, almost as though she knew the state of Tara’s womb.

Tara thought deliberately of other things.

There were so many Dan McCreas in the world, she was used to meeting them on their own terms, flirting right back or treating them like flies. But Ivy had told her several times that she was courting trouble.

Pilar’s response made her feel worse things—that she’d teased Dan and somehow let down every woman at the hospital. She wondered how Isaac had reacted to her performance with his brother, if he saw her as Dan did—that she viewed things as “black and white.” That she was a hotheaded “crusader” for a trivial cause?

Damn it, it wasn’t a trivial cause, and she’d been trying to do the right thing.

“Okay,” she told Laura as she carried the baby toward the maternity unit, “so maybe I’m a little folksy and backward. I can live with that.”

DAN McCREA HAD BEATEN her to the labor and delivery suite, and he and the anesthesiologist were busy trying to talk Millie Rand into an epidural. “You know, I just think you’ll be more comfortable if you try the epidural, Millie. Maybe dilate faster.”

Tara wanted to step in, to say, This woman wants a natural childbirth. No drugs, no epidural, Too black and white for you, Dr. McCrea?

Francesca said, for perhaps the tenth time, “My client has expressed her desire for natural childbirth.”

“Francesca, what if I can’t do it? I never have before.”

This was Millie Rand’s third child; the other two were staying with a friend. Her husband had gone to childbirth classes with her. Compared to what Tara had seen daily in Sagrado, this birth promised to be a piece of cake. If the boys would just get out of the room.

Millie’s adrenaline must be pumping now. Who could have a baby with someone terrifying her? And all this chitchat is stimulating her neocortex, just when she needs one of the older parts of her brain to take over. Time to get primal. Why hadn’t she had this conversation with Dan when she had the chance? As her buddy Star in Sagrado always said, Don’t fight—engage.

Millie’s husband put in, “Millie, I know what you’ve been talking about since you knew you were pregnant, and an epidural wasn’t it.”

“She’s in pain,” Dan exclaimed.

Tara tried to evoke some feeling of compassion for Dan McCrea. A flicker was as good as it got. The man sent her straight into radical midwife mode; Ivy called it “RMM,” as in “Tara, you’re in RMM.” So be it. Dan, I bet your brother was born at home and you weren’t. Your mother must have been drugged, because you can’t tolerate pain now. Circumcision wouldn’t have helped, either.

There. She felt better. The man suffered from hospital birth.

“You’re five centimeters dilated, Millie,” Francesca encouraged. “You’re doing great. How about walking some?”

Millie’s husband gave her an encouraging smile, and she began to climb out of bed, just as another contraction came. She moaned through it, and Francesca said, “That’s right. Keep your mouth loose.”

“I’m going to order a monitor, Millie. I’ll feel better about your baby if we know how it’s doing all the time,” said Dan.

“I can use the fetoscope, Dr. McCrea.”

“We don’t want a monitor.” Millie’s husband supported his wife’s body as she labored.

Tara watched his tenderness for only a moment. It was all she could stand before unwanted emotions bubbled up. Just a man to love her like that, to want her to have his children. Down on the border, she didn’t see this—just women alone, women like her.

She paused in the doorway. As the doctors in the birthing suite pressed their case, two people approached from the end of the hall.

Isaac. And Pilar, her musical laughter preceding her. Tara’s heart thudded, and Laura stirred against her, then began to cry.

Isaac’s gaze avoided Tara’s as he peered in the door of the playroom, and the nurse continued down the hall without him.

“Back to work.” Squeezing Tara’s arm affectionately, Pilar sailed past, into the birthing suite.

Laura fussed, rooting for the nearest breast. There were too many people in the room, anyway, another labor-wrecker. Tara left. Noting Isaac’s new coolness, she hurried by him, to sit in the waiting area and nurse. She wished she didn’t care what Isaac McCrea thought of her. She didn’t care.

Isaac checked on his daughter. Danielle was fast asleep, her braids against the green nylon of his North Face bag. He could hear a woman moaning in labor. Francesca Walcott’s voice came from a room several doors down, the birthing suite. “You’re doing wonderfully. Millie. You’re such a good mom.”

Sometime, Isaac hoped to ask Francesca how her daughter had gotten so screwed up, but he reminded himself it was 1:00 a.m. And what had Tara really done except come on to an attractive man and talk too much about homebirth?

There were things about her he liked. Her simple clothes—corduroys, T-shirts and sweaters. Her nursing that baby. And the quality he’d once found in all beings—nobility of spirit.

Leaving Danielle, Isaac went out to the waiting room, found Tara and joined her.

He sat forward in the next seat, long forearms on long thigh bones.

Laura had not been nursing well, crying most of the time. Tara wondered if maybe the baby wasn’t really hungry. Ignoring Isaac, she moved the tube away and put Laura to her nipple. As the baby latched on, she felt a strange tingling, new and unfamiliar. She was lactating! Her breasts were producing milk. Probably just drops, but... “This is incredible! I think I have milk.” And much sooner than she’d ever dreamed.

Isaac felt the miracle, shared her pleasure. Inducing lactaction wasn’t easy. But his breath was shallow, his stomach muscles tight, as she switched the baby to the other breast, reached under her shirt and sweater, and brought out a sticky drop of milk on her finger, then licked it off. He said finally, “When is the mother going to take over?”

“What?” Tara recalled what she’d told him, that she was raising Laura for Julia. She’s not going to take over. “I’m not sure.” Why the sudden urge to level with him, to blurt the truth?

The appearance of her own mother, obviously steaming, forestalled any confession.

But Laura was still nursing, and Isaac lingered. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said. “About babysitting. We could talk about it more.”

Could we talk about marriage? Oh, Tara, get real. “Yes. Yes to everything.”

His eyes never left her face.

Knowing Francesca wouldn’t say what was on her mind in front of Isaac, Tara used her finger to break Laura’s contact with her nipple. “Okay, pumpkin. Let’s go see your grandma.”