The Other Side of the World

It’s 4:30 am and I can’t sleep. In fact, I just woke up. This is what I look like:

Christmas is wonderful – my dear family becomes about 10x more manic than usual (which pushes corresponding levels of nerve damage somewhere into the stratosphere). There are 6 different kinds of cheese in the same fridge. Life is a crazy whirlwind and I enjoy alternating between being a wide-eyed, mute, panicked observer & shrieking in the melee.

It is certainly not hours of quiet, solitary study.

Strangely enough though, both secnes stem from hype around someone or another’s birth.

Perhaps Christmas is just a time when everyone else realizes the outrageously miraculous spectacle that being born is.

Yeah, amazing, isn’t it?

. . . it’s enough to keep you up at night

I mentioned to a couple of friends before I left NZ that it would be strange to come back to my life as an unattached 23 yr old with no outwardly identifiable links to child-bearing whatsoever.

And it’s true – I often find myself at work waitressing, or out with my peer-age friends, or doing xyz and catch myself in the laughable thought “Is *this* what a midwife looks like??”.

Although as one of my profs always says “There’s a midwife for every woman”. Once again I’m grateful that I can both adore and reject the stereotype.

Back to my point, however. What I have discovered, is that even when I’m so far removed from anything birth-y (barring my fantastic intact perineum dream of last night!) birth comes to me. It comes in the stories of anyone who has been born and who has given birth, in anyone who has seen it, or never seen it, or been in awe of it, or never given it a second thought (until they run into me, hehehe).

It’s such an honourable role to be a guardian of birth *at* a birth – and yet when you find yourself becoming the guardian of birth in language, conversation, the open public space, it is a profoundly deep, weighty, proud mantle to be wearing.

And this is one of the reasons I love midwifery and why it rings true to my vision of a well-lived life
- because everyone has to be born

and, so

birth is for all of us

A scant few weeks ago I was on a remote beach in New Zealand dodging sand fleas and marvelling at the great big beauty of it.

Today I woke up late, scrambled to get dressed (clean underwear shortage already?!), feed miscellaneous cranky dogs, grabbed a cheque that needed to be taken to the bank (late!), found my name tag and dashed cold and crampy off to race around a restaurant for 5 hours.

I wonder how long I could keep doing the same thing before I started craving this switching nonsense?

They say birth is the great humbler because you never learn to anticipate what it thrusts your way.
I prefer to think of it as the great entertainer.
. . . . and switch.

So, I’m practicing on my holidays.
. . . . and switch.