I have stroked, cradled, caressed, held, hugged, mopped sweat, wiped feces, emptied vomit pails, rubbed nipple to stimulate slow labors, soothed and reassured the discouraged and fearful. I have been drenched by amniotic fluid and felt the warm seepage of it in my shoes and socks. I am immune to the smells of sweat from the hard toil of a woman’s labor, and the laboring love of a midwife. My hands have ached from massaging a lady’s back for hours, and I have longed for sleep and felt that I could not go on. I have shed tears of emotion to see the love between a man and woman and from the exultation of reaching the top of the mountain and catching the newborn as he emerges from the womb. I have felt real fear when I watched blood pour out and there was only me and God to stop it, and when a baby lay limp and I had to breathe into it the breathe of life. Birth is hot and wet and sweaty and intense; moist sticky, primordial, sexual, and mixed with the smells of blood, amniotic fluid, feces, sweat, vomit. Birth is full of sounds of work and sex and joy, groans, moans, screams, sighs, panting, crying, and laughing. All the body participates and no one present can be indifferent to this powerful and sacred event. Being a midwife is my life’s passion. There is nothing else I would want to be. To be a midwife is to be me. I feel blessed to have this calling.