The Other Side of the World

A woman who had recently lived in NJ for seven years sat down in Antenatal clinic this morning and began to discuss her birth plan. She went through a fairly extensive list of things she explicitly wanted in her birth plan such as:

no routine epidural
actual delivery of baby in water
eating/drinking during labour
baby not separated from mother
baby roomed with mother and not in nursery
baby not offered/fed formula
no routine IV insertion

In response to all of this, my very blunt midwife preceptor responded incredulously - “But these things are all normal! Why wouldn’t you be able to eat/birth in water/be with baby/exclusively offer breast. . .!”
She was truly confused as to why these requests were being made, since these things are so far out of her scope of experience (and this is a primip* hospital birth).
The mama-to-be and I had a good laugh, in that smug sort of we’re-on-the-right-side-of-the-world way.
Also, circumcision here is virtually unheard of, there is only one Doctor (GP) in the whole region who will do it, parents have to pay $200 out-of-pocket (all other maternity care is free) and nurses refuse to hold babes during the procedure so parents must be in attendance. Pretty darn enlightened if you ask me!
Not that it’s perfect here, but today was a good dose of perspective.

P.S. Still waiting on that birth from last. Anyone want to bet she goes tonight?

*primipara - first time giving birth

my birthday morning and I am woken up by my midwife singing in her heavy Dutch accent and bearing a tray with tea, dutch chocolate toast and tiny wrapped presents. Way off the prescribed curriculum I’m sure, but a perfect addition, nonetheless, to a plethora of birthday-breakfast-in-bed memories from the last 23 years.

to be honest, I feel as though I have landed unexpectedly in an surreal idyllic retreat - the large beautiful house perched on a tall green hill with snow-capped mountains, waving toi tois and woolly sheep bounding around the horizon. The agenda of the past week can be sumarized as: sleep, palpating pregnant bellies, and consuming vast quantities of hollandaise sauce.

even the drive up was only traumatizing for the 8km through the steep, winding gorge in an absolute downpour of rain (thanks New Zealand for that opportunity. . . ). But as the realization that I was alive sunk in at the other end, the breathing/swallowing/muscle-relaxing eventually kicked in and I merrily zipped the next two hours East in the lovely Gertrude (on loan).

still no babies born, although the first one is due today (and seven more in the next three weeks!) and I am quietly sending it reminders that being earthside on this particular day is a wonderful thing. . .

yesterday, the midwife urged me towards an enormously swollen belly and I placed my hands gently-deep into its tense, quivering bulge, cradling the round hardness of the head, the firm curve of the back and the soft knobs of feet and knees that glided beneath the layers of flesh and fluid. I found the right place for the doppler and for the first time, I brought to open air the steady, determined flick of a heartbeat.
Little beats, that for a moment, seemed to overwhelm everything else in the whole wide world.

As if every single word on this whole entire site wasn’t already devoted to me, myself and I (and related matters, but it all comes down to me eventually. . .) my friend whose awe-inspiring chronicles of Midwifery apprenticeship in the Western United States can be read here http://midwiffleseed.blogspot.com has ‘tagged’ me, meaning I list eight or so previously unmentioned things about myself, and then pass the privelige on. In other words, an excuse to talk about me. Which is already the whole point here, but nevermind about technicalities, on with the list:

1. I have a severe addiction to granola with plain yogurt and even though I dont believe it’s the healthiest thing to be eating (really!) I have sometimes allowed this to be the entirety of my food consumption for the day.

2. I love words and use them excessively, a practice exacerbated by several people I regularly converse with who support and feed the habit.

3. I often wish smoking wasn’t bad for you because I would love to do it - the action of it is so soothing.

4. I am a physical affection whore I will use whatever means possible to touch as many people as possible whenever possible. I sometimes wish I was a cat so I could twine myself around people and get away with it. But this only applies to people I get the right ‘feeling’ from.

5. I like to do almost everything obsessively, compulsively and with absolute disregard for schedule, routine, spacing-things-out or what is polite and acceptable behaviour.

6. I have frivolous tendencies towards organic lip balms in tiny metal tins, European sparkling water in small glass bottles and stretchy black cotton shirts.

7. I find immense satisfaction in wearing untoward amounts of black eye-liner and then staring people in the eye.

8. I absolutely love: being small, my name, my long, wild hair and the freckle on my right pinky finger.

And since the tag came from an internet friend of long-cherished-standing, I will pass it on to another long-cherished-standing friend from, as they say, *the real world* who has a rather brand-new presence on the internet http://www.jo-joanna.blogspot.com/

and now, back to the exam studying (thanks for the procrastination!)

“Your pride is permanently stomach-based”
Well the boys visiting from London seem to think this is an appropriate (and even brilliant) title for this photo, but in reality, swallowing my pride of late has nothing to do with my fingernail size. We were all quite amused though at the comparison between my pinky and their corresponding thumb nails. Shoes sizes 12, 4, 11 respectively. Actually, my knee even looks quite small in this photo. . .

Evidence that the lads do laundry. Although apparently not often enough: “how do we make the water come out? What do all these dials do? Why does nothing happen when we turn it?”. And for the convoluted record, Joe’s mother taught my neighbour (back in Canada) Art when she lived in London, then she moved to Canada, invited her former teacher and her family to visit, I met them, they let me stay in their house in London while they were away, and now Joe (on the left) is touring the world with his friend Edmund and they stopped by my humble little town to say hi. And I think do some laundry.

I would like the world to know I made some decent attempts at calling my little brother for his birthday. Attempts that included e-mailing him for his phone number. Also sending him telepathic messages asking for his phone number. Also creating positive imagery that his phone number would come to me in a dream.
There are limits to the contact you can force upon your family whilst on the other side of the world and buried in looseleaf paper upon which is scrawled words like “antenatal assessment of the breast” and “belief that birth is a normal physiological process”. It’s all becoming a massive blur right now. But where was I? We should be talking about my brother’s birthday and not female reproductive issues!
Luckily for the subjective continuity of this blog I discovered the perfect intersection of these two topics some time ago, and it has been my pleasure ever since to (occasionally) point out to the dear boy that I dealt him a great kindness in life by clearing the birth canal for him*. I’m almost positive my actions reduced the impact on his tender pre-natal fontanelles. And so, in honour of that (nevermind my mother who actually birthed him, or his own efforts) I will wish him the happiest of 21st birthdays.
Much love to my oldest and dearest friend. Who is now really old. Gah!

*the hazards of having a sister in midwifery school. He also knows more about the placentas and the merits of homebirth than any other guy his age that I know. Pretty darn cool, eh?

Mon Pere, being the man he is, thoughtfully slipped into the boxes of daily mundanities (ah, that’s where all the grey cotton underwear was. . . ) something a little more practical. Practical in the ancient customary sense, that is. The accompanying e-mail states “it will protect you, so you must never take it off”. I think this was also in reference to my previous ‘cheating’ of wearing my jade loose enough to slip off. Of course, toying with the ancients like that resulted in it getting kicked off in two pieces by my little brother’s bare foot. An un-aimed kick, in the dark. I know.
Before taking it off became an issue, however, the *putting on* of it was addressed with plenty of freezing cold running water (can’t have the tissues swelling), friction-destroying lather and a peverse desire for encirclement that managed to momentarily overwhelm all innate pain-avoidance mechanisms . Given the drama of this event, however, I will be leaving it on for my own protection somewhere in the time frame of forever. May the ravages of aging be kind to my wrist circumference. . .
And now, like my mother before me, I can ‘accidentally’ deliver bone-cracking raps to unsuspecting people who think they’re cozying in for a hug. Ah, tradition!

[and as for the photo - you try taking one of your dominant hand!]

as requested by the boy who last consumed it whilst doing me a scope-ful favour:

Makes - an industry-standard sized amount?

1 1/2 C butter
3 3/4 chopped pitted dates
3 tsp baking soda
3/4 C caster sugar
6 eggs
3 3/4 C flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
5 1/4 tsp baking powder

Place dates in saucepan, cover with cold water. Boil. Reduce and simmer 3 min, add baking soda, set aside.
In mixer: cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Gently fold in flour, salt, vanilla. Slowly stir in baking powder and about 1/4 C liquid from cooking dates until mixture resembles thick pancakes (note: NZ pancakes are like Place Milton i.e. thick, crepes, so take that as you will). Drain remainder of cooking liquid off dates, stir dates into batter.
Bake for 40 min or until cooked in center (except that it was written ’senter’ so perhaps that’s a key difference?)

Happy puddings!

Our last day of school for the semester, giddy on a bag of sweets and not enough sleep (Karen had been at a birth all night), we take some liberties with the lab on reflexes (especially the one where the pupils dilate if you stroke the back of someone’s neck).
But, see - we can be serious midwifery students when we try! Tracey actually looks uncharacteristically composed in this photo.
And now on to exams, and then moving, and then driving up to Hawke’s Bay to be immersed 24/7 in the life of the midwife for an entire month. It’s all a bit head-spinning (in that feels-fantastic-but-you-might-be-sick fashion). Wish me luck!