Midwifery is catching

Granted, I get paid for it as well but it helps me deal with anxiety. I don’t have huge things to stress about at the moment but oddly enough, chickens rank top of the list of things I’m stressing about at the moment. We have a chicken run here at home and the dramas around badly timed arrivals of "free" chickens have me feeling anxious.

Add to that list the situation of my quasi-SIL who is booked in for a c-section shortly for her second bub which I am alternately VERY EXCITED about and also kind of pensive. Dumb me has been reading about the risks of c-sections as part of my insatiable cruise for knowledge and it’s not happy reading. I also know that she’s in good hands, and there are other things on my mind, but knitting is helping anyway!

I’ve also been thinking about The Meaning of Life a la Monty Python. In the scene about birth, where the birthing woman is flat on her back in a room full of people and machines and such, and the doctor demands the machine that goes ‘ping!’, the woman asks "What do I do??" and the doctor says "Nothing my dear - you’re not qualified!". This is how some people approach birth, and I know that lots of women probably have no idea that there are other ways to do it. From reading lots and lots of birth stories, from both midwiffle’s points of view and mother’s, that naturally the woman finds positions that ease the process on. I find it fascinating that so many women seek water, and find relief in it. It is extraordinary that a woman should instead be forced to lie on her back during labour, in a position that defies the laws of nature and gravity to bring a babe out, and surprising that many books still talk about clamping and cutting the cord quickly rather than letting it stop pulsing (physiological third stage I think it’s called).

I am also wondering how my being sans children will be taken by women when I become involved in childbirth. Do you have to have been there, done that to have an idea? I am ambivalent about male OB/GYNs because I figure that a particular doctor has about as much of a clue about *my* bits as the next, regardless of gender, but will women not give me credit for having a clue because I’ve not birthed myself? How would that feel for someone who *couldn’t* have children and had felt that getting into midwiffle would help her be involved in the process for other people?

And - what do you think of the new template? I like it .