Reaching a Milestone

So this week marks another milestone on my journey to becoming a midwife. I will head into a Labor and Delivery unit this week on the West side of Chicago. Although this is the regular L&D stint that every nursing student does, I will be extending my stay into what they call "leadership semester" in the Spring. So pretty much from here on out it's mom's and babies for me. I have this weird sense of fear about what the next months hold. I am very aware that I will be working in conditions less than my ideal, that I will need to abide by many protocols and procedures that I just don't agree with. But this is just one of those times of sucking it up with the distant hope of being a solution and an influencer to many of the issues facing birth in America.
My last months have been full of pediatric rotation, which incidentally I did love and enjoyed working with kids and their families. Then I moved on to the psych ward in which I met many lovely people, however was depressed by the prison feeling. We were on a locked unit which means that we had to keep asking other employees for a key just to go to the bathroom, a little crazy! But there were some fun and intense moments . . . but I am pretty sure I am not swayed by mental health nursing.
So on I go, five more weeks in L&D and doulaing for some friends at a homebirth. Then a nice five week vacation over the holidays and back for my final RN semester in the Spring. It is really unreal how fast this time has gone.