Midwifery is catching

I am outing myself as an old schooler there by thinking in terms of terms and semesters still - my school has only just this year changed to having 144 study periods (I kid you not) and this semester is study period 2, and next semester is study period 5… just to confuse people. Anyway, this is week 5 of term one of twelve, and I have a new ticker to celebrate:

Yeaaaahhhhh, that makes me feel just thrilled . Ok how about another one for my first placement:

That’s better! I have volunteered to be placed in a rural hospital, so I may end up in the Spencer Gulf area though I’ve also said that Woollongong would be nice and convenient to Sydney/Canberra for visits. I have volunteered to do that for a number of reasons, the main ones being that I think a rural placement would be fascinating, and also because it may mean that a local student who is unable/unwilling to fit into a rural placement because of lack of transport, family duties, job commitments or a dislike of going outside of Adelaide has a better chance of getting a placement with the group midwifery practice. That said though, given the model of the gmp, I can see that many of the students who don’t have transport, or are the main caregiver of children, may really struggle with that model of midwifery care. The alternative model of set rotating shifts has definite benefits for the midwifery-student it seems!

Last week I had my first practical class and I am of two minds about it. On one hand, I can see that what we learnt will be of great help to us, as our first placement will be kind of hard/pointless if we can’t take a BP, know what a vaginal examine kind of vaguely entails, and at least have seen someone palpate.

But - and it’s probably a small but - my group had a mixture of nurses and mature-age students (erm yes, including me!) and fresh-out-of-highschool students. The first group took over and showed everyone their skills without going slowly enough for the others to follow (especially the more shy/timid ones), and some of the latter were really and utterly wigged out by the fake pelvises. Many had never been faced with sharps for eg and were all over the morphine saline injection station while three of us wielded syringes. Even though the lab rules clearly state closed-toe shoes, someone had thongs on and narrowly avoided having a syringe dropped in/on their toe, and yet still managed to remain pissed that I’d asked her to step away from the three of us lest someone get hurt.

It was a small but, and really, the whole two day experience was fantastic in terms of getting one step closer to being with women. It was so intersting to meet some of the external students who have come from all over the country to study this course. It was amazing to see our lecturer’s eyes lit up when she spoke of birth and women and pregnancy.  

A comment on my blog recently said lots of things but one thing stuck in my mind, even amid the car accident aftermath and such. That post was born mostly from feeling completely and utterly ungrounded by and from everything at the time, and my really questioning what was driving me in this direction. I don’t want my course to become a means to an end and yet already it is partly feeling like that - if not because many people assume that I am doing nursing first, then because of downright reluctance from older nurses that I have had interactions with to accept direct-entry midwives, and other people questioning my drive for doing this (misplaced baby lust apparently!).

And let me hasten to add that in the end, I loved working with my group, I did them proud, and we are a lot closer for it! 

"My other tip is this: don’t worry yet about what kind of midwife you want to be. Trust me when I say that you don’t have enough knowledge yet to know this. Your heart will lead that quest in time. Focus for the time being on the work in front of you. It’s important and will help shape that midwife you will become. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, don’t over schedule yourself (I do this too), and read things which remind you in the best, positive way, of your calling.

So I did. I got a few books to inspire me in the best positive way I can. I made contact with people who will keep me grounded. I have made peace with the fact that many of the people in my course will probably end up being medwives because they are not inspired to be anything more - and that that’s something I have to be ok with. Just like they’re going to have to be ok with me pursuing evidence based care about strep B testing, glucose challenge testing, physiological third stage, breast is best, ultrasound, weighing during pregnancy and a heap of other things!