Vocabulary in Catrin

An official record book kept by a hospital or government office in which important events such as births are formally written down and preserved.

The blank, empty boxes printed on an official form, ready to be filled in — suggesting order and newness before life's complications begin.

The poem's name for the umbilical cord, the physical link between mother and unborn child, here treated as something that both binds them together and is the source of their struggle.

Competed or struggled for control of something; here it means mother and child each pulled against the other during the birth, neither willing to simply yield.

Becoming more constricting or harder to escape; here it suggests the emotional bond growing more demanding and pressuring as the daughter grows older.

Dragging or pulling something along behind; here the rope of love is imagined as still attached, drawing both love and conflict along with it through time.

A clash of opposing desires or wills; in this poem it refers to the ongoing tension between the mother's wish to protect and the daughter's drive for independence.

Bare, harsh, and completely without decoration or comfort; used to describe the cold, clinical atmosphere of the hospital delivery room.

The physical process of childbirth, during which the mother's body works intensely to push the baby out; here it is also treated as an emotional and combative struggle.

Relating to the cord that connects an unborn baby to its mother, supplying it with nutrients and oxygen; the poem uses it as the central symbol of connection and separation.

Stretched tight and under tension, not slack; the poem uses it to convey that the emotional bond between mother and daughter has never relaxed or been fully released.

The freedom to make one's own choices and act independently; the daughter's desire for this is what drives the recurring tension with her protective mother.