Midwifery is catching

I think if I ever get bored or completely disenchanted of being a midwife (yes, that’d mean "after I’ve graduated" and "after I am a midwife") (and possibly "shortly after Hades freezes over"), I’d like to specialise in something like maternal fetal medicine. That’s where I spent a day last week - following around an amazing woman who is responsible for providing midwifery, women-centred care for women and babies who come under the heading of "complicated heavy duty stuff related to pregnancy" at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital here in Adelaide.

The day started off simply enough - feeling each other’s approaches out, working through some basic stuff, and getting ready for the day. That was after I struggled to find the lovely Beck, as she is a bit of a nomad around the hospital, and I’d been less than prepared in contacting her yesterday to make sure I knew what the plan was for today. Anyway, I met up with her and got a crash course/refresher in the things that go awry for both mothers, and their babies. After a few visits and file collections and trips to the lovely basement (I love basements of buildings! They’re so gorgeous and interesting and out of the way of your average Joe Public!) we had a much needed coffee and a chat about stuff. The afternoon had us attending the hospital round for complicated cases and there was a huge range of issues covered, none of which I can cover here for privacy’s sake. But I was also amazed at the dial-in of people from Darwin Hospital, who had a really rare case that was a lot like a really rare pair of cases that the WCH had recently regarding the umbilical cord (I think - at this stage I was short on food, water, oxygen and brane cells so I can’t really remember) and it was fascinating seeing the video conferency technology applied to medicine as well.

I love learning and I love learning about complicated issues as well. So today was fascinating for me. I also got to see situations where technology is needed, and is the sole reason that women remain relatively healthy and babes join us earthside. Whether I agree or not with the amount of effort that goes into this, when people are homeless and bankrupt and unhealthy, is a matter for another post but it was a good reminder that hospitals do amazing work when they are needed.

That’s my GPA at the moment in fact. I am fabulous at some types of university essay type work.

In other news, when midwifery is hard, it is really hard. Today was a hard day. Yesterday was exciting and challenging (emergency c-section with classical incision, which was the first I’ve seen!) but today was just awful and amazing all at the same time. I can’t go into specifics but when there are two extremes of life - awesomeness and awfulness all at once - it wrings you out, chews you up and rips shreds off your soul. And in a professional sense you have to keep your shit together while inside you want to throw up, throw something, or throw your arms around the nearest person.

I’m on placement at the moment, after exams. That’s the reason I’ve not posted in too long - did you miss me? I have some things queued up to post about and have things to say so should get back into it.

In the past few weeks, I’ve attended a birth with a woman whom I worked hard with the get out from under obstetrician care and into midwifery care. She had been triaged into the high risk but hated the fact that the obs run an hour late for apppointments, don’t know her from a bar of soap, don’t do anything more exciting or high tech than the same palpation, blood pressure and fetal heart that a midwife does and generally had little empathy for her or interest in her specifically. The midwives at least have that. The last appointment with the consultant was about as personal as using an ATM and she looked at me afterwards and said "do I have to see him again?" and I said "no" so she stuck her head back in the room and asked for a note so she could book back into the midwives clinic and the ob agreed! He was a little shocked but signed off before thinking it through.

And yes, even as I type this, I’m wondering why women let themselves be triaged like that. This woman has one factor that put her in the high risk category and that one issue was never discussed with her or raised as an issue for her pregnancy and just never factored in her care… and yet it meant she was denied women-centred care.

Anyway, where was I. Right. A birth. I attended a birth and it was the first one in months that I’d attended and it felt good. It wasn’t a brilliant, change my-life-kind of birth - it was in fact quite average. But I was a good midwife and even in the context of a hospital birth it was great for the woman. She became a mother, just as I’m becoming a midwife.

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I recently asked the universe to help me with my follow throughs because I’ve been in a funk recently with seeking them out. I have to work up the nerve to talk to strangers and ask them to be a part of their pregnancy and births. It’s a really hard slog to do it and when you’re in a bit of a blue it’s even harder to do. So I asked the universe to help me out and I also asked my friends to help me out and I was, in quick succession, called by a midwife whose list I’d made it to the top of, called by a community midwifery service whose list I’d also made it to the top of, and then by a coordinating midwife who gave me two other leads. And all four of them said yes! And another follow-through whom I’d not heard from in a while got back in contact with me, so my heart rested a little easier. Chasing numbers is an awful part of my degree, you know?

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In other news, I’ve unenrolled from university internally and have gone externally for a couple of reasons. The first is that I need to work to support myself and my lovely fiancee and kitty, and working around uni is far too hard. The other is I get very little out of studying internally so I may as well put my time to good use, right? Uni this past semester has been pointless in a lot of ways. The classes haven’t added to my knowledge other than to frustrate me about the state of education in this country and to remind me that I don’t learn well in a classroom. 

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Osk and I have decided to make a formal thing with our relationship. You know, because a joint lease, joint car, joint $$ and living together wasn’t official enough. So a few weeks ago (date tba but that’d require me to look it up) I asked him to do me the honour of my calling him my husband. We have rings and will make it legal and official sometime next year but you may be picking up a vibe here of understatement. Neither of us is making a big deal of it and there won’t be a huge party for the engagement. Zaria (kitty) will accept any gifts on our behalf if you’d like to send us something - please give her a call to arrange delivery. There will be a party after our planned elopement to somewhere like Lake Ohau and details will come early enough for peeps to travel to Adelaide. Every question about wedding dates sets it back by a week by the way . 

Photos of the recent Independant Midwives Association of South Australia meeting when I gate crashed and presented stuff about kangaroo care to with some fellow students! There were some semi-famous people there and other students from the university here.

Oh dear here we go to name them all - front row (L-R): lovely student who works at close to city but in the country hospital, JF, me!!!, Megan, Ms Reflexologist 

Back row: Lisa Barrett, Rose, Ros, another IM, Rosie, Tania, student, student, Kate, Kylie

More photos:

So this week was the first week back at university. Weeeeee - back on the old rollercoaster. Timetables, assignments, textbooks and 40C heat. Erk. One of my lecturers is a famous author who I won’t out here but she is inspiring me to think outside of the square regarding women-centred care. This weekend I’m off to Womadelaide to hang out with the Homebirth Network in more 40C heat. 

I’m not feeling I have anything to blog about here. I don’t have amazing birth stories to share. I don’t have anything that is stirring my heart at the moment. I look at the next two years and beyond and wonder where I’m going to find the energy to get through it all. I talk to a friend who has started a year behind me and she has similar callings to what I do, about women-centred care and homebirth and I am sad that she will have to choose between study and her heart. I find the politics of studying to be annoying and frustrating, and I think I’ve developed a hint of "I don’t want to fail so I don’t want to start" with so many things.