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"Mmmmmmmm"

"Can you lie down for a bit, Lucy?" Patience finally asks exactly at ten ress and listen to the baby again"

The second Lucy is on her back I observe so," Patience explains "It relobe See the bits of white in the amniotic fluid? That’s vernix, a creamy substance that protects the newborn’s skin while it’s floating around in there By the time the baby is full term it’s mostly worn off"

I’ve never seen an intact amniotic sack before Dr Blum and the other physicians I’ve worked with always broke the membrane early in labor With the very next contraction the sac pops and water squirts all over the bed

"Whoops!" says Patience, not a bit fazed A tiny pink girl folloith the next push

"You okay, Becky? You’re as white as a sheet"

"Yes," I lie I’ve watched aery, scraped dead tissue out of infected wounds, but this baby came so fast I didn’t have time to prepare myself

"You sure?"

"Yes," I lie again and sit down before I faint

"That onderful!" The ives Lucy some of Mrs Potts’s herbal medicine, just in case, and she tells me not to bathe the second baby; the white vernix is healthy for her skin Then Mr Mitchell and the children creep back into the rooain and watch as Lucy feeds both babies froiven birth Never wanted to It horrified h labor until someone could put them under anesthesia, but this is different, and now that it’s over, I see that all that we did in the hospital and the clinic and even at Dr Blum’s homebirths was more to comfort ourselves than to really help thehis wife’s hand and pressing it to his cheek Six-year-old Clara crawls into my lap

June 17, 1934

Birth of twins, a male, Cecil Mitchell, (5 pounds, 8 ounces) and a female, Callie Mitchell (5 pounds) to Lucy and Clarence Mitchell of Bucks Run

The first tas already out e got there Lucy and Clarence birthed him alone, but he was covered with meconium and the midwife had to suck out the baby’s mouth and nose Luckily the baby hadn’t aspirated