Bad Beaver Publishing

Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year
from BAD BEAVER FARM!

From Carol and Tom,
At the end of February, Carol fell on the ice in Dog Poop Alley and suffered a radial head fracture of the elbow. The whole story can be found on her blog at:
http://badbeaverfarm.com/blog/index.php/2011/03/10/the-saga-of-my-broken-arm/ Contrary to medical advice, Carol took her cast off and signed up for a strength training class for senior women. She worked out with 80+ year old women doing weights and resistance training with those lovely ladies until she was able to pick her nose with her left hand. Her arm was completely healed in less than 6 weeks thanks to those feisty old gals. (And now she wears YakTraks to get old deaf Gladys out of the compost pile at night.)

Carol’s book Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart, A Midwife’s Saga, became a run-away best-seller and was approved as a Sociology textbook for use in all colleges in the US. That’s what happens when you get this old…everything you did in the past is now considered to be of historical significance. The original manuscript of LHLH is in the Margaret Sanger Archives at Smith College.

In March, Tom and his brother, Lee, left for an epic cross-country motorcycle trip on their BMW GSs. They were gone for 2 weeks and got as far as Tucson, Arizona. They froze their nuts off on the way back but they made it home safe and sound.

Tom is working on getting a patent on an invention he developed called The Bad Beaver Shingle Shortcut. It’s a gizmo that makes sidewall shingling a breeze. He demonstrated it while shingling our little cabin in Ellsworth, CAMP KWITCHABITCHIN, with cedar shingles made from our own cedar trees. He says I can’t say anymore about it because it is Top Secret. Tom is still a very busy beaver and despite the downturn in the economy, he is over-committed with building jobs as usual.

On July 3rd, we did our annual ride in the URAL to the top of Mount Cadillac at dawn to watch the sunrise for our SIXTH wedding anniversary (Tom says it feels more like 60.) Brother Lee and his girlfriend, Nancy Benedix, rode in their URAL with us. It is such a beautiful ride watching that breathtaking ocean view winding up and down the mountain in the sidecar. What a blessing. Later that day, we had our annual Lobstah Bash at The SeaWitch with a boat-load of relatives and friends and much crustacean body parts.

In mid-September, Carol took a course with NH Fish and Game called “Field Dressing Big Game.” The story can be found on her blog at: http://badbeaverfarm.com/blog/index.php/2011/09/15/the-gutters-5/

THE NEW BARN AT BAD BEAVER!

In late September, Tom finally realized his dream and began work on his barn at Bad Beaver. Liam (AKA “Casey”) O’Brien came to stay with us at the Beeve for two weeks to help Tom get it built. The barn is maniacally engineered. Tom has been building it in his brain for years. It is insane. The second floor is supported with 4 enormous (30’) steel I beams from a NH highway overpass. The whole thing went up like a giant erector set with the help of his 2 LULLS. Now Tom can drive all his equipment around inside the barn without being hampered by columns. (A must have, apparently, in a man-cave.)

There are 120 roof rafters in the barn. Tom cut all the lumber for the barn from our own trees with his sawmill! The roof rafters are HUGE. They are 2 x 10 x 30’ and weigh 150 lbs. each. Tom physically lifted every single one up to Liam who was waiting up on a cat-walk. They got all 120 rafters in place in one day. Lots of Ibuprophen for dinner that night.

Tom and Liam pushed like hell but they got it done in 13 days.
DAY THIRTEEN ~ 10/8/11. The barn is 30’ x 70’, 4200 sq.ft. Designed and engineered by Tom Lajoie, the baddest dam beaver of them all.

The barn looks like an antique New England barn from the drive and the gable ends. The far-side has 5 huge bays for all of Tom’s equipment. A great quote overheard from Tom describing his structure, “The first impression of the barn is one of New England tranquility. The far-side looks like JiffyLube.”

Milan still lives in Bar Harbor with his girlfriend, Nina Donghia. They have a quaint little cottage at the base of Mount Cadillac. This is great for us because we get to see them when we go to Ellsworth. They have a band, Coke Weed, that is very popular in Maine. Their new video just came out:

Coke Weed – Magpie
www.youtube.com
The second single from our new album – available 2012.

I absolutely adore this song. Milan writes the music and Nina is the singer. Hauntingly beautiful.

Lastly, we put our house in NH on the market with LandVest in early December. http://landvest.com/property/13896980/585-Hopkinton-Road-Hopkinton-NH-03229 It is a huge move for us but we are ready to commit to Maine for the long haul. The real estate market is about as shitty as it’s ever been…but we decided to pull the plug on this thing and see what happens. We’ve already had one showing. Actually, if Hopkinton does sell immediately…we’re going to be living in JiffyLube.

We hope that you are healthy and content and joyful. We send you our love and best wishes for 2012.
SMOOCH! Carol and Tom, Gladys (who is still going strong at 15), Phaedra Louise, “foster dog” Matilda, Taboulie (AKA: Catzilla), Shrimpy and all the chickens.

When I was a young kid my mother arranged for me to be able to tag along with old Doc Kennard of Bedford, NH. Doc Kennard was kind of famous as a naturalist/surgeon and he had a bird-banding station at his house that I helped him out with after school. I say he was famous as he wrote many articles in bird-banding journals, including: Reverse migration in the Dark-eyed Junco. Anyway, he was a wealth of knowledge and he taught me how to identify bird-calls and to track animal and bird tracks in the snow and how to identify scat. He also removed my appendix.
I was in love with the outdoors and built many “camps” in the woods where I set up small snare traps. I would camp out at my trap-lines overnight. I never caught anything, not sure I knew what I would do if I did find something in my snare. Actually, that’s not true. I did once catch a vole but it got away. I still have a crescent shaped scar on my right thumb.
Most people automatically assume that I am a vegetarian. I have no idea why. Even as a young kid, I craved protein. While my younger siblings would be delighting in sweet treats, I would go straight for the leftover hunk of steak in the fridge. My sibs would be wallowing in chocolate pudding and I would be smeared with A-1 Steak Sauce.
I did go through a spell of vegetarianism in my late teens, being macrobiotic was all the rage. By the time I was down to about 100 pounds, my hair began falling out and my periods stopped, I realized I had to embrace my Inner Carnivore. The migraines stopped with my first cheeseburger.
As an adult woman, my diet preference was fish with occasional poultry and no “red meat.” By the time menopause hit, the migraines were back with a vengeance. I realized again I needed to embrace my Inner Carnivore. I craved all things red. It was a little scary. I became like Rosemary’s Baby.
Now on to trapping. I don’t have a good history with guns. There was a very, very bad incident 25 years ago with my late husband and a 12 gauge shot-gun. It did not end well.
My current husband, Tom, likes to hunt and we have good hunting land in Ellsworth. I took a course in “Field Dressing Big Game” so I can help him out. Tom is fine with killing but he developed a mild allergy to eviscerating. I found this out when we did-in our 12 roosters that were originally sold to us as “pullets.” I found that I love having my hands in a still warm animal. It must be the midwife in me. I am totally fine with cleaning out entrails.
Tom and I are at a point in our lives where we would like to know the origins of the food we eat, as much as possible, especially meat. I would like to reduce the amount of commercially raised meat that we consume, the more we can avoid the hormones and antibiotics of supermarket meat, the better. Our dream is to provide as much sustenance from our own land as possible. This had become very meaningful for us.
I am healthy and strong. I would be honored to be able to apprentice with a local trapper to learn as much as possible from an experienced and skilled practitioner. If you would consider taking me on, I would be truly grateful.

Hopkinton, NH, 10/20/11

I just heard and saw (mostly heard) the most amazing thing…about 10,000 black birds just congregated in the trees along our field. They were making the most incredible NOISE! It sounded like thousands of monkeys screeching or hundreds of really rusty, grinding, shorting-out machines. Mostly, the birds sounded really excited! Excited to be on this journey, excited to be retracing the precise path to South America that their ancestors took millions of years before them.

Just before they departed, the noise escalated to a roar that sounded like a jet plane landing in the field. My mouth dropped open. I grinned. It sounded exactly like the roar in a Dead Show just as everyone peaks together. Magic. Then they flew off in a huge black cloud. Adios black birds…may you arrive safely in the land of your ancestors.

1D. FIELD DRESSING BIG GAME:
Proper care of game in the field is a very important part of hunting ethics. This is often a very difficult thing to learn on your own. This class will review the procedure for field dressing a white tailed deer. Be prepared for a hands on opportunity.
[from Becoming an Outdoors Woman in New Hampshire, Fall 2011]

Déjà vu. It is the first day of school. Only this time I am riding in a long yellow school bus full of excited, screeching women who are headed to the shooting range. The “shooters” all have on pink Ruger caps given to them by the gun company. They bounce along down the road in their matching caps, happy campers leaning over seatbacks to be heard better, yelling and switching seats. The energy is high and there are a lot of them. This is the first time shooting for many of them.

I, on the other hand, am in the way back with my eight other classmates. We are like the bad girls who used to sneak cigarettes in the back seat of the bus. We are the “gutters” and I do believe the rest of the women may be avoiding us. I don’t know anybody so I strike up a conversation with my seatmate…another woman who is about to disembowel a large cute mammal.

She is an attractive red-head with a big smile. It turns out she has lived in Moscow on-and-off for the past fifteen years. I worked as a midwife in the “radoms” or maternity hospitals in Moscow in the early 1990s, so we have a great conversation about the deplorable state of women’s healthcare in Russia. We chat with occasional Ruskie phrases sprinkled in our language. She had much the same experience I did with the realization that Russia is really an impoverished third-world country. I like her immediately.

The shooters are dropped off at the firing range and the rest of us continue on to our “Field Dressing Big Game” class. We come to a clearing in the woods and the sight is initially very shocking. It looks like the aftermath of a horrible attack. Carnage everywhere. There are eight deer carcasses and one bloated black bear lying on the ground roughly in a circle.

These animals are road kills; the deer all have broken legs. NH Fish and Game has gathered these animals and kept them in a freezer waiting specifically for this class. The first thing that assails me is the horrific smell. Our instructors tell us to shove Vicks VapoRub up our nostrils to disguise the odor. This works…temporarily. I have to renew my gooey nose plug several times over the course of the next few hours.

Our main instructor is a burly retired Fish and Game warden named John. He is exactly as I imagined he would be; seasoned, knowledgeable and patient. He also has a dry sense of humor…a very necessary trait in this line of work. He starts the gutting of a large doe immediately after briefing us about knife safety and sharpening. One classmate is afraid she might be sick but after John’s demonstration and straight-forward anatomy lesson, all of my classmates are eager to dig in.

I pick a smallish doe because a Mourning Cloak butterfly has landed on her nose. Bambi. I am a little disconcerted by all the flies but after the first incision and I open her up, I relax and am in my element. This is all very familiar to me; skin, facia, muscle. The hunting knife is extremely sharp and the eviscerating goes easily. I have a little bit of a struggle with the esophagus and I have to go in up to my elbows but soon the entire mass of entrails breaks free and slides onto the ground. Out of curiosity I open up the stomach and find my little doe had been eating acorns. Sweet thing. I feel confident that I can field dress game now to cool down the meat.

The last lonely carcass is that of a male black bear whose abdomen is expanded as tight as a drum. I think we have all been avoiding him because he is so bloated; he looks like he will explode in a burst of foul-smelling, released gas with the first incision. So, of course, John asks me to do the honors.

John says, “Carol, so now you have your game. You are all alone in the woods. Now what do you do?”

Something about the way he says this causes me to automatically drop to my knees at the bear’s side and shout,

“Call 911!”

I shake the bear and say, “Bear! Bear! Are you alright?”

I find the xyphoid process and position my hands and begin CPR (well, the C-part anyway…the pulmonary part would be virtually impossible because his teeth are sticking out about four inches from his lips.)
John looks around and says, “Now you women are seriously starting to scare me.”

And I am right. This bear is so unbelievably stanky that no amount of Vicks VapoRub is going to prevent this gag-fest. Holy Ursus! I smell this poor bruin on my fingers for days. But I sincerely thank his Bear Spirit for allowing me to learn from him.

On the bus ride back to camp, I chat with another gutter in my class. It turns out she did all the black and white photographs in the original edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Wow! We have a poignant recollection about running around with speculums looking at cervixes during the height of the Self-Help Movement of the 1970s. I am astounded.

Where else on earth could you possibly eviscerate an animal and then have a scholarly discussion about global women’s health?

Only at Becoming an Outdoors Woman in New Hampshire.

~ Carol Leonard is a midwife and is the author of the best selling memoir LADY’S HANDS, LION’S HEART, A MIDWIFE’S SAGA, Bad Beaver Publishing, 2008.

8/25/2011
~ For Gerry Hamilton ~

Hello and Good Evening.
My name is Carol Leonard and I am a midwife. Actually, Christine and I were the first two midwives practicing in Concord. Gerry Hamilton was my OB backup since I was a kid really…since I was 26 years old. I’m not going to tell you how old I am now…but that was like 400 years ago.

But that’s not why I am here tonight. I am here because Gerry was also my buddy. I am here because tonight is the most inappropriate time to tell a dirty joke. So in true Hamilton tradition, I am going to honor Gerry by launching into an off-color joke…oblivious to the fact that it may make some people pass-out.

Forgive me Christine. Gerry, this one’s for you…

So, there is this skinny little old lady in a nursing home. She’s naked and she’s wearing a purple cape. She keeps running up to groups of little old men…and she flashes them, yelling,
“SUPER PUSSY!” and then she runs away.
She runs up to some more little old men, and yells,
“SUPER PUSSY!” and then she runs away again.
Finally, she runs up to a little old man who has had quadruple by-pass surgery and she flashes him, and yells,
“SUPER PUSSY!”
and he looks at her (scrunches up face–disgusted) and he says,
“I’LL HAVE THE SOUP.”

GODSPEED GERRY! WE LOVE YOU!

More about Bobby, the Hopkinton Dump Master:

I stuff the last of the old rose-colored wall-to-wall carpeting in the back of Tom’s new pickup truck. We have ripped it up in order to make way for the fancy new non-porous “laminate” flooring that is required by the state for birth centers and other “out-patient health care facilities.” Tom has already started laying down the new floor so I am volunteered to drive the tons of ratty old carpet to the Hopkinton dump.
Usually I go to the outside bin to dump my stuff, but the lip is too high for all this heavy carpeting, so I back Tom’s truck into the building where the commercial dump-trucks go. I back right up to the railing that is about 6” high—like the kind of railing found beneath bar stools. I stand at the side of the pick-up bed and drag the carpeting out and down into the trash compactor. This particular compactor is large, about the size of a semi-trailer, and it is actively munching away, happily crushing all the garbage trapped in its jaws.
The concrete floor at the railing is coated in some unidentifiable, despicable slime that is as greasy as Vaseline. I have just pulled the last hunk of carpeting out and I give it a good toss, at which point, my foot slides in the grime and I go ass-over-teakettle over the rail. I fall screaming head first down into the Muncher…except, by some Divine Intervention, the toe of my left cowboy boot gets hooked under the rail, wedged between the concrete floor and the steel…and, the frickin boot stays on.
At this point, I am dangling by one leg and I am looking the jaws of the Muncher straight in the eye, so, obviously, I am screaming my bloody head off. Bobby, our old and wizened Dump Master, comes running out of the observation room where he has seen the whole thing go down. He comes running with a long pole that has a brass hook on the end of it…it looks like an elephant tamer’s pole. In retrospect, I’m sure this pole is Bobby’s way of snagging trash that he feels is a treasure that he can re-sell at the junk sale that is always going on in front of his house. Whatever, the elephant-recycling pole saves my life.
Bobby is a skinny, wiry old thing, but he is strong. Scary strong. He fishes the pole down to me and I grab on and somehow he lifts me up. Probably the heaviest piece of re-cycled trash he’s ever rescued, but he does it.
I’m standing there, shaking, barely able to talk. I’m blubbering, “My god, Bobby! I almost got eaten by the Muncher! That f@*%# thing could’ve killed me!”
Bobby calmly grabs some paper towels and wipes gray blobs of grime out of my hair and off my back as I cry. He is muttering comforting words, like, “Jesus, deah, that was a hell of a sca-ah. What the hell were yah thinkin?”
When I have recovered my composure enough, I get back in the truck and drive home. I fall sobbing into Tom’s arms and recount the story, ending with, “I could died today in that horrible Muncher!”
He holds me at arms length and his eyes narrow. He says, “You mean to tell me that you drove my new truck home coated in garbage…and you didn’t even put a newspaper on the seat?”

~ Carol Leonard for Bad Beaver Publishing, 8/2011

This is the story my mother, Louise [Leonard] McKinney, tells of my birth.

My mother read Grantly Dick-Read’s Childbirth Without Fear in 1950 when she was 24 years old and was pregnant with me, her first (and naughtiest) child. She felt confident in the process of birth and with herself (which I find fascinating as my mother was orphaned at a young age and had no real female role models…she was raised by two severe Victorian maiden aunts who had never borne children.) She requested that she be able to birth without medication. Her doctor patly said this would be fine, and he never mentioned it again.

She says the night I was born, she remembers folding baby diapers (pronounced “die-AH-pers” by all Maine senior citizens) with some of the labor and delivery nurses. It was 7:00 PM and she was experiencing some “cramps.” The next thing she knew, I was born. The doctor ignored my mother’s request and knocked her out colder than a mackerel. I was born at 9:03 PM.

Here’s what I just figured out: If my mom had mild cramping at 7:00 PM and I was born at 9:03 PM…even if I was a high forceps delivery (pretty standard in those days), my mom had to have been close to full dilation while she was folding the diapers. She was in labor for less than two hours…and she was a Primip! So, despite 1950’s obstetrical technologies’ best attempt to mess this up…my mom kicked ass!

I am so proud of my mom…SHE is a role model.

(Louise McKinney is now 86 years old and is a little pistol. She runs around with all her girlfriends…well, the one’s who are still alive anyway…and she beats them all at cards and takes their nickels.)

~ Carol Leonard, 6/10/2011

“How The Name BAD BEAVER Came To Be”

We have bad beavers. Not only bad—we have mason beavers. When Tom and I first purchased our land in Ellsworth, Maine, a beaver dam was partially flooding the big main field that had once been a cattle pasture in the early 1900s. The field where we wanted to build our house. Now the east side of the field was under about two feet of water, complete with beautiful Blue Flag Irises. Tom said straight away that this was not acceptable; the beavers would have to go.

One of our rare marital spats ensued. I think I won, having drawn the line at mammalian violence. I said Tom would simply have to outsmart them…how hard could this be? I felt confident that Tom could outwit the world’s second largest rodent.

The first time Tom destroyed the dam, he only partially broke it down with his hands and feet, to make a sluice way to lower the water level. The water began gushing over the breach and the beaver pond/ex-little stream was lowered by about a foot and a half.

What we didn’t know at the time is that the sound of gushing water drives beavers mad.

When we returned to the field the next day, we saw enormous “swales” dug through the field. Overnight, the angry beavers had dug trenches about two feet deep and three feet wide so they could float WHOLE TREES to repair their dam. Now the front of the dam resembled a log fortress, complete with a sentry beaver. I thought to myself, “Uh-oh, I think this means war.”

Tom, not to be out-done by this engineering marvel and not having rodent incisor teeth, resorted to his trusty Husqvarna. He got busy with his chainsaw and removed a whole front section of the dam. Now the water was rushing out at a tremendous rate. We could tell by the damp rings on the skeletal dead trees in the pond that the water was lower by around two feet.

“That should fix the little bastards,” said Tom.

When we returned a few days later, our mouths dropped open in absolute shock. The beavers had repaired the dam with ROCKS! They swam on their backs carrying rocks the size of melons on their chests…then they mortared the rocks in with clay. The whole dam resembled the Tower of London. We had Mason Beavers!

Apparently, only a small, aberrant branch of the beaver family has this rare, double-recessive gene to employ masonry.

Now we had to resort to some serious ingenuity…so we Googled “beaver removal”. First Tom got the plans for a “Beaver Deceiver” which he installed immediately. This was a wooden sluice-like contraption he made that had thick wire mesh on the underside, the theory being that the beavers can’t figure out how to dam something upside down. Right-O. This did deceive them for about two whole weeks (which, actually, is the longest time anything has worked.)

Next came the “Beaver Baffler” which was some kind of elbowed-PVC gizmo with holes drilled along the sides. We can’t even find that anymore, we have no idea what the beavers did with it.

And so the contest between wonderful man and intelligent rodent continues to this day. I did notice this spring that it looks like the beaver lodge has a second story addition…and a couple of new flower boxes out front.

 

My son, Milan’s, new album cover…me washing his hair ~ circa 1975. 

You never know do ya?!?  yeeesh.

http://cokeweed.com/

            I squirm down into the cold metal stirrups and I lie with my legs splayed. One of the bitchy nurses snaps on a pair of latex gloves, squirts on some KY Jelly and prepares to examine my cervix. She doesn’t speak and does not bother to warm her hands. She plunges her fingers into me and her eyes widen in surprise. She says I am already five centimeters dilated and wants me to go straight to the hospital because of the bad weather. I decline. I opt to go back home.

            I go back home because I don’t really want to hang around in a sterile antiseptic institutional environment waiting for labor to kick in. I also go home because tonight we are having a fabulous dinner party for the men who helped us build our new house. I love these guys. They are all committed bachelors and very baby-phobic. But they are incredibly hard working and funny, intelligent friends. Together we have all built a beautiful handmade home in the NH woods.

            The dinner party is frankly ridiculous. The contractions shift gears and are now coming every five minutes. I try to be nonchalant and charming. Every five minutes I tense, catch my breath and try to fake a sickly smile. I begin squirming uncomfortably in my chair as I feel my bottom could very possibly—at any minute–turn shockingly inside out. I try to breathe unobtrusively, but my nostrils are flaring. I grit my teeth and my eyes start to water.

            Every five minutes, the guys stop eating and hold their breath. They stare at me in horror. Robert looks like he may retch.

            Michael says, “Shouldn’t we boil water or something?”

            I go upstairs and call my neighbor, Talie. Talie has had three babies…all born at home with a local doctor. I don’t know about the home birth part, that seems kind of sketchy to me, but she’s a pro at childbirth. The story about Talie that I love the most is that when she was shopping in the IGA grocery store in Bradford, her water broke in the condiment aisle. Talie was so embarrassed; she grabbed a huge jar of pickles and smashed it down on the floor right in the middle of her puddle. “Clean up in Aisle Three” boomed over the loudspeaker.

Now I need her seasoned wisdom. Talie tells me to lie down, concentrate on the intensity and that I will intuitively know when it is time to go. I lie down. I throw up green beans and roast chicken. Now I know. Definitely time to go.

            John and I fairly fly out of the house, leaving the guys standing there helplessly. Their eyes are wide and shocked mouths drop open.

            “Good luck!” they mutter.

            “Do the dishes!” I shout victoriously as our car careens down the driveway.

            Thirty minutes later, when we can see the lights of Merrimack Valley Hospital in the distance from the highway, I get my first real wave of serious labor. That sucker hurt. Without warning, the contractions begin coming every minute. This is no longer fun, nor funny. I am gripping the dashboard of the Peugeot. I find I am panting like a dog. Yup, this is serious pain. Not pain like if you broke your leg or something without a pattern to it, but real genuine pain, none the less. The insides of my nostrils are getting hot from panting. Beads of sweat are dripping from my forehead. I am seriously wondering how I am going to get out of the car once we get there.

            The two of us manage to make it to the receptionist in the lobby of the hospital. John has to drag me the last half of the way. The receptionist informs us that since it is still a half-hour until midnight, we will have to pay for a full day. John and I look at each other. We don’t have medical coverage. I decide I’ll be damned if I’m going up to the maternity ward before midnight and get billed for it. I stay in the lobby. I huff and puff and pace, waiting for the clock to tick away. I begin to get tremendous pressure in my butt. I groan and squat down, pretty unconscious of my actions at this point. The other lobbyists peer over their magazines in abject fear. At 12:01 AM, I accept the offered wheelchair and am escorted up to Merrimack Valley Hospital’s Maternity Ward.

            I am wheeled by a night nurse down a long beige tiled hall into a large beige tiled room with several curtained-off, high railed hospital beds. I catch a glimpse through a crack in the curtain of the woman in labor next to me.

            “Jesus, Joseph and Mary, this is all your fault!” the woman keeps yelling, over and over like a litany.

            I am about to make a snide comment on the woman’s Catholic choice of labor coping mantras, when I am engulfed in the worst pain known to womankind.

            “Holy Crap!” I yell.

            When I can breathe again, I find myself repeating my own, personalized mantra during contractions.

            “Oh shit! Oh dear! Oh shit! Oh dear!” I wail.

            “Jesus! Joseph and Mary!” is screamed in unison from the other side of the curtain.

            This proves to have a strange comforting effect, a technique not commonly taught in Lamaze class.

            I am ordered to hoist my rock hard belly up onto the rock hard bed and to spread my legs in order to be “prepped”. Prepping consists of shaving off all my pubic hair and giving me a “Triple H Enema” (High-Hot and a Hell-of-a-lot) so that “we” will be “clean” for the doctor, as the labor nurse so delicately puts it. The labor nurse is an older woman and she is chewing gum. The old nurse examines me and looks quite pleased. She announces that I am already eight centimeters dilated. “Only two more to go! Good work, deah!”

            She instructs me to use the adjoining bathroom if I need it. IF? With seven gallons of hot soapy water in my rectum? She’s kidding, right? She says to be careful not to soil the bed sheets and leaves the room and closes the door.

            Within minutes the enema is becoming unavoidably insistent. I try my best to make it to the loo without leakage, shuffling in between whopping contractions. I am semi-successful. Now, I am sitting on the throne, reassessing my predicament.

            Here I am panting on a rusty toilet in a harshly lit, drab concrete room, shitting my brains out.

            I am thirsty, very hot and sweaty, kind of dizzy, and I am all alone.

            There is a woman shouting desperately to the Holy Ghost in the next room.

            I am about to experience one of the most profound and meaningful acts possible in my entire lifetime.

            What the hell is wrong with this picture?

            And how come no one has even checked the baby? Maybe because it’s late at night and they are short staffed?  And what if my baby is born in this jailhouse toilet with nobody else in here? Then what?

            Labor certainly is an interesting process. I am in awe that my body knows exactly what to do; it is functioning like a finely tuned machine. I am feeling pretty proud of myself. However, with the next contraction, I do believe my bottom is history. My yoni is excruciating, on fire. This is impetus enough for me to drag myself out of there and back up onto the scaffolding of the bed. The Jesus woman has been taken away.

            Now the pain is overwhelming. I can’t move. I can’t even swear. Forget the breathing, jasus. I lie here as wave after wave of crushing spasms wash over me. I gape at the ceiling. Oh my god. I can’t handle this. This is truly unbearable. Then…a remarkable thing happens. I separate from myself. I realize that I can give my life to bring my child through, that I will willingly die to be his gateway to this world, my love for him is that strong. I stop struggling. I feel myself surrender and open up…I start to push. I push in big, involuntary moose-call pushes. The old nurse comes running back in. John is allowed in after filling out all the necessary payment forms.

            Pushing is unbelievably powerful and I am unbelievably vocal. I am not prepared for this. Either I am really being that loud or it just sounds that way inside my head. The old OB nurse is pleasantly perched between my legs, snapping her gum. She gives me a thumbs up and an ongoing progress report on the visibility of my child’s head.

            “I can see a dime. Yuh, now I can see a nickel”, she reports in her New Hampshire drawl. “Hell, I can see a quatah!”

            I like her. In between straining, I ask her if she can just deliver my baby right here in the bed. Maybe tell the doctor it was born too fast to make it to the delivery room. She smiles a huge smile but shakes her head, no. The doctor on-call would have all hell to pay if she failed to wake him up in time. Especially since it is Dr. Easey.

            Dr. Easey! Damn. I hadn’t thought about this. The OB practice I go to is a group of five men. They are secretly referred to as “Fifty Fingers” by their women patients. Easey is the doctor I like the least. I see him as a cold, steely man with mocking, ice blue eyes. Now he is the OB on-call. Shit, Murphy’s Law.

            John sees my momentary distress and attempts to comfort me by placing a cold washcloth on my forehead. Just at this moment the strongest bearing down urge hits my butt. I angrily wing the washcloth across the room. I tell him not to touch me, as a matter of fact, to never touch me again, ever. John retreats to the safety of a chair in the corner of the room to wait it out. He hides his face in his hands.

           An hour and a half later, a lot of Milan’s head is visible; it no longer retreats between pushes. I can see bald wrinkles. Then all hell breaks loose. The doctor makes his cameo appearance. He is grumpy and rumpled with sleep. He takes one look at my efforts and grunts something unintelligible and turns to the delivery room to scrub up. Some orderlies appear from nowhere. They slide my contorting and pushing body onto a high, narrow gurney and rush me down the hall at high speed to the delivery room.

Once there, I am moved again onto the even higher delivery table, all the while with a head between my legs. I am made to lie flat on my back with my legs up in the air in metal braces, like a June bug stuck helplessly on its back. The table is cracked in half with the lower part removed, so my butt is now suspended in midair. Because I have had no drugs, I am allowed to watch the proceedings in a standup mirror. I see myself being painted from navel to kneecaps with orangey brown Betadine.

            Now Milan’s head really starts to crown. The stretching is merciless. I feel as if my fragile labial tissues are splintering into a thousand shards of glass. Nobody is paying any attention; they are all getting ready to do their assigned jobs. My butt is still hanging in midair and my poor expanding yoni is BURNING. I do the natural thing. I reach down to soothe the fiery skin around my child’s emerging head.

            Dr. Easey sees me do this. He flips out. Totally and irrationally. He is irate that I have the audacity to touch myself in front of him. He slaps my hand away. He shouts that I have contaminated his sterile field! Goddamit! He gives orders for me to be restrained, for my hands to be strapped down. He continues ranting as though I am a disgusting, wild beast. The nurse ties my hands securely with leather handcuffs that are built into the table; they look like the wrist restraints found on electric chairs. I watch as Dr. Easey cuts a huge mid-line episiotomy in my vagina. Milan’s head is born.

            It IS a miracle! As Milan’s body slides out of me, he kicks me for one last time. The doctor puts him in a clear plastic warming cart across the room. I am straining to see what my son looks like. All I can see is one pudgy leg stretched up tentatively testing the air with his toes. How sweet! I want to hold and inspect that chubby thing.

            “Please give me my baby.” I say politely.

            Nobody pays any attention to me, so I say it louder.

            “Please give me my baby!”

            On the third try I actually shout for my child. “GIVE ME MY DAMN BABY!”

            They all stop bustling around and stare at me as though I have postpartum psychosis already. Dr. Easey looks irritated. He picks up Milan and unceremoniously plops him on my chest. My hands are still strapped to the table. I struggle to look in my newborn’s eyes, not being able to move my arms. I feel someone tugging angrily at the straps, untying my wrists. I look up into John’s brown eyes over his surgical mask that is streaked with tears. So much emotion in those eyes! With my hands finally free, I begin touching my baby all over his sweet, fat little body. I start rubbing the white creamy vernix into his skin, massaging him. I smell him; sniff his neck, behind his ears. I want to lick him, but I already have the sense that Dr. Easey thinks I am a borderline fruitcake.

           My bald baby is so beautiful, so perfect, even if he does look a little like Gerald Ford. Milan looks at me and frowns. Then his eyes focus and he squares me with the most intense, penetrating gaze, “Who are you?”

            This important meeting is cut short by a very rough and painful delivery of the placenta. I look up in time to see Dr. Easey yank the placenta into a bucket waiting on the floor by his feet. When I look in the mirror, I can’t believe my eyes. My poor yoni has been transformed into something unrecognizable. It is draped, shaved, stained dark brown, cut, bleeding and gaping open. It looks like a Thanksgiving turkey ready to be stuffed and trussed. This is when the conflicting emotions begin. I am incredibly high from giving birth, proud that my body is so strong and wise. I am speechlessly in awe of the process. I have just done the most powerful thing I will ever experience in my life, and yet…I am completely pissed.

            A growing feeling of anger is starting to cloud my euphoria. I feel thwarted that my accomplishment has somehow been belittled, that I have been strapped down like a lunatic, degraded and humiliated in this most sacred of times. It is an increasing uneasiness; it is at first hard to grasp what is wrong.

            Milan weighs in at a whopping nine pounds. Ouch. Must have been all those nauseating Adelle Davis Brewer’s Yeast and Wheat Germ shakes. My little Budgie is taken from my arms to go to the nursery for the high-test newborn exam. Supposedly he has to wait there until the morning shift when the pediatrician comes to do his rounds. Milan will be thoroughly checked out during normal business hours. John goes with his son.

            Dr. Easey repairs the episiotomy in silence. It seems to me that he is taking an inordinately long time down there. I wonder if he’s embroidering his initials. I ask how bad is the damage and how many stitches are needed. I am trying to make inane conversation at 3:00 in the morning with someone who has just cut my vagina to shreds. Surprisingly, Dr. Easey says his first full sentence of the entire night. He proudly states that he is doing his trademark “Husband’s Stitch”, which is putting in a few extra stitches at the top of the perineum and pulling it tight so I won’t be floppy and stretched out from having a baby. How thoughtful. He’ll make sure I am good and tight so there will always be enough friction for my husband. I am going to be even better than before! Is this guy serious? I picture my yoni pursed and puckered together with all the flexibility of a vise-grip. For the rest of my life I will have a numb spot there.

            Dr. Easey finishes up his needlework and comes up to my head. I think, now he’s going to congratulate me for doing an outstanding job.

            Instead, what he says is, “Some women are meant to be workers and some women are meant to be breeders. You are definitely a breeder.”

            That does it. The man is a sexist sadist. I need to get out of here. Fast.

            I say to him, “I want to go home.”

            Dr. Easey looks stunned for a moment, then gets an imperious look.

            “You are aware that hospital policy is that you must stay for at least five days postpartum for observation? You do understand this? Comprehend?” he growls. “You absolutely may NOT leave against my orders.”

            He turns abruptly and heads out the door.

            “I am outta here!” I yell after him as he disappears down the hall.

            The OB night nurse comes back with the orderlies and they wheel me down some more beige halls to the beige postpartum ward. This is a big open room with about a dozen beds arranged dormitory style, for those patients without insurance who are unable to afford a private room. They get me settled in for the night; the nurse squeezes my flaccid belly with a vengeance. She puts a veritable mattress of a sanitary pad on me.

            After they leave, I slide out of bed and tentatively try walking. I feel like I have a bowling ball in my butt. I’m sure I am popping stitches with every step, but I am famished and I want my baby. I shuffle with baby-steps down the hall, cringing with each movement. I am following the sound of my baby crying to the nursery.

            John looks surprised to see me. He is holding Milan.

            I say, “Let’s go.”

            I bundle up my baby and the three of us sneak out of the hospital in the early morning hours of April 9, 1975. It is written in my medical chart that I left “AMA”–against medical advice.

This is the beginning of my life’s work.

~ Excerpted from LADY’S HANDS, LION’S HEART, A MIDWIFE’S SAGA by Carol Leonard, Bad Beaver Publishing, 2008.