The Daily Uniform

So for a South African girl who grew up wearing a uniform to school it is actually quite refreshing to wake up and know right away what one is going to wear. And truth be told since I have to put this on at 5am to make the train it's great to cut down on early morning decision making. And scrubs really are comfortable and I can understand why people wear them all the time and advocate for them to become real clothes. Of course, the white leather shoes on the other hand . . . those could go as far as I am concerned . . . but my dear friend Joyce has promised she will make sure that I never feel it is "ok" to wear them anywhere else besides the hospital!

Keeping an eye on the goal

This week to keep my eye on the goal of becoming a midwife in the middle of starting clinicals and hubby being away for work all week I have been reading an amazing book. The Baby Catcher . . . mostly I can't believe that I had never read this book before. A dear friend Jenn gave it to me for my birthday. It is the story of Peggy Vincent, here's the back cover blurb:

"She never tired of the miracle. Each time she knelt to "catch" another baby, beloved California mid-wife Peggy Vincent paid homage to the moment when pain bows to joy, one person becomes two, woman turns to goddess, and the world moves aside to make room for one more soul. Trained as a nurse at Duke University in the early 1960s, Vincent begins working in the delivery room of a local hospital in the San Francisco Bay area. Even after establishing an alternative birth center at the hospital, however, she is still frustrated with her lack of autonomy. Too often she witnesses births changing from normal to high risk because of routine obstetrical interventions. Vincent then devotes herself to creating unique birth experiences for her clients and their families. She becomes a licensed midwife, opens her own practice, and delivers nearly three thousand babies during her remarkable career. With every birth comes an unforgettable story. Each time Vincent "catches" a wet and wriggling baby, she encounters another memorable woman busy negotiating her unique path through the labyrinth of childbirth. Meet Catherine as she rides out her labor in a car careening down a mountain road, her husband clueless at the wheel. Megan delivers on a leaky sailboat during the storm of the decade. Susannah gives birth so quietly and effortlessly, neither husband nor midwife notice much of anything until they see a baby lying on the bed, and Sofia spends her labor trying to keep her hyper doctor-father from burning down the house. More than just a collection of birth stories, Baby Catcher is a provocative, moving, and highly personal account of the ongoing difficulties midwives face in the United States. With vivid portraits of courage, perseverance, and love, this is a passionate call to rethink today's technological hospital births in favor of a more individualized and profound experience in which mothers and fathers take the stage in the timeless drama of birth and renewal."


It has been extremely refreshing to get excited about the future babycatching that I will be a part of. I highly recommend picking up this book and being inspired !

“This is really happening!” is what I thought to myself in an epiphany as I sat through 4 hours of “Powerchart” training on Tuesday (charting software in the hospital). It was just one of those moments when the reality of all the skills and labs that have begun to be furniture in my confined live quarters of the last two months, begin to take shape in a much larger context. I don’t know what it was about that moment, learning to enter data that one day soon I will be collecting and entering into Powerchart, that brought about the clarity. It may have been the actually being in the hospital, actually having a clue about what the various not long ago foreign words and acronyms meant. But there is was the reality that I actually am going to be a nurse.

Then it happened today again at “Research Day” . . . which in many ways I scorn, because I am a feeler, not a knower . . . I think most of life is on a need to know basis (a google expert!). I am most interested in learning things that pertain to what is meaningful and important to me in the here and now. So I was kind of dreading listening to a whole bunch of academic theories being spread around, but today I did get a glimpse into why the theory of nursing might be a little bit different and more appealing to me . . .because evidence based practice is just that . . . the theories actually have a shot at becoming practice. So despite myself, I must admit sitting in that room full of nursing students and faculty I felt a little bit of pride for my new profession. Internally there was an acknowledgement that although I do not believe I fit fully yet and I feel very infantile, that one day I will share the deep heritage and history and unwritten rules of these people and that really they do not appear to be too bad.

Another positive note this week was the physical assessment test, I aced it and I felt so proud and was really affirmed by the testing instructor. I don’t know if it’s merely the fact that this experience starves us of affirmation, but it felt so good to be celebrated for a job well done. I was told that I was going to be a good nurse (something admittedly I believe about myself, but it’s hard to keep believing as I am surviving GEP). It was encouraging to hear: “if you kept on doing just what you had done and that through doing it you would learn many things that would make you an even better nurse”.

Overall, this week has been a mile marker for me. It closes off eight intense weeks of steep learning curves and feeling completely inadequate, never-mind physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. I am walking away with a slightly clearer identity as a nurse and a little bit of a thrill to walk into the hospital next week and meet my next terrifying experience head on with the hopes that I will indeed make a great nurse and a great future midwife.