The Birth
Transition is followed by the second stage of labor, when the baby moves down the birth canal and out into the world. At the end of the first stage more often than not he faces to the mother’s side. As his head moves down the birth canal it usually turns to face her back so that he is born facedown.
At last the baby’s head can be seen at the peak of each contraction. Soon the baby is “crowned,” the top of his head remaining visible between contractions. This is an exciting moment for father and doctor, although the mother must be patient a little longer. Now the mother must push much more gently so that she does not tear her vagina. If the mother or the baby is having difficulty, the doctor may perform an episiotomy by cutting the tissues between the opening of the vagina and the back passage to ease the baby’s passage or speed up delivery. Slowly the little head emerges, its face a bit squashed and puckered with the effort of being born.
The doctor checks to see if the cord is round the baby’s neck (it only occasionally is and can usually be easily un-looped). He turns his head to face the side again, and then asks for the last push. Then, so suddenly after all the effort, the little boy slithers out, ready to go straight to his mother’s waiting arms and breast. And there he is, a new person in the world; so perfect, miraculously grown from the single fertilized cell. Soon his father will tell the world of his safe arrival: for the first moments the three of them are there, together. One senior obstetrician told me that he has never been present at a normal birth without seeing a smile on the face of everyone else there – and smiling himself. The mother herself often looks so radiantly ecstatic that the time immediately after birth has been named the transfiguration.