I know I have been lying dormant forever, maybe I am really not a blogger . . . but of course that is what happens when you have a "theme" for your blog and yet you are not always participating in that theme . . . but this week I am happy to report that my soul has been awakened by: talk of contraceptives -- educating and inserting them! Seeing many a cervix, measuring pregnant bellies and becoming an expert measurer of fundal height (all you pregnant friends watch out whenever I get a measuring tape in my hands) and watching the mothers eyes light up when my newbie hands chase a 6monther around with the doppler. Of course the light may have light up since I seemed to be having such trouble finding their poor babies heartbeats, but of the power of holding the doppler. I have also learned some important facts . . . such as I will definitely have to learn Spanish (and quite possibly birthing and women's health lingo in several other languages as well).
I will actually have to relearn my cell biology, since I actually looked at a specimen under the microscope today to determine what was causing a woman's issues . . . I had no idea those skills would be used as a midwife!
But mostly, I am happy to report I am just as excited about all of these things. And this was mostly a surprise gift. I am currently in a community health rotation, which basically means we get a variety of experiences out in the field and out of the hospital. So I was placed at the Uptown Health Clinic, which is run by the public health department. It services many of the low income populations in that area of town. And they have two midwifery groups that send one midwife a day to staff their women's health clinic. It was such a privilage to be taught and endured by these wonderful women and to watch as they serve, teach and nurse those around them. It was a wonderful two days and I am sure it will have to last me for a while. But again I am excited by every moment I get to remind me of where I am headed.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Revived
It is hard to reflect on birthing into my midwifery career, whilst in the middle of not really being around birth at all these days. But I did survive my first semester of Nursing School and I have had the last week and a half off. Tomorrow marks the return to the next phase . . . summer semester. We have heard that each one becomes increasingly easier. So I hope this is the case, however it seems like it would be hard to believe since the weather has taken a long time to finally get good and I will spend most of the summer in the confines of a hospital.
We are also in the throws of our decision to move to the suburbs for this next phase of life, and caught up in buying and selling homes. So far we have a contingency offer on a semi-fixer house, and are waiting for our condo to sell. So for right now I am birthing things other than babies and birthing new life in our little transition. And potentially for the second time taking on the birthing of a house . . . another favorite kind of birthing.
We are also in the throws of our decision to move to the suburbs for this next phase of life, and caught up in buying and selling homes. So far we have a contingency offer on a semi-fixer house, and are waiting for our condo to sell. So for right now I am birthing things other than babies and birthing new life in our little transition. And potentially for the second time taking on the birthing of a house . . . another favorite kind of birthing.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Caught Up In The Last Days
Yes, I am aware that many of you check in here to see how I am doing and right now I am hanging on by a thread. I am a week and half away from being finished with the first semester of this journey. I mostly can't believe I have made it. This week I had a great clinical week. I took care of a 31 year old woman that had a stroke hours after she found out she was pregnant with her second child. Very sad! However, she is doing "relatively" well and they were working on getting her to a place where she can go to rehab. She really responded to me and that was exciting. Her mother who was there the majority of the time, told me she thought I wast he "real deal" not a student nurse. That was a good feeling, knowing I can pull off the whole gig confidently enough, and the truth is that I am getting more competent and confident in doing all the things nurses do.
So although I am learning a lot I am looking forward to getting through this summer and getting on to the baby's and moms that I am looking forward to working with. It will come and I am settling into the fact that this is a long journey ahead of me and I am trying to figure out a way to enjoy the journey and not be so focused on the end results. Because I have this feeling it's going to be a while before I arrive!
So although I am learning a lot I am looking forward to getting through this summer and getting on to the baby's and moms that I am looking forward to working with. It will come and I am settling into the fact that this is a long journey ahead of me and I am trying to figure out a way to enjoy the journey and not be so focused on the end results. Because I have this feeling it's going to be a while before I arrive!
Sunday, April 6, 2008
The Downside of Caring
Moment after moment this week, I felt myself assuming the identity of a nurse. Two early morning train rides before the bustle of the morning commute. It is a completely different world filled with other types of shift workers riding alongside me, often dressed very specifically for their jobs. Wearing my scrubs, filling all those big pockets with the gear for the day. And experiencing my day unfolding as I watch people move through the agony of their various diseases and complications – sharing a few of those moments with them, but fully aware that I am a champion and supporter, but really they must continue to do the hard work of living. I am merely a quiet observer as they live out this life they live.
I have felt this feeling of hopelessness often as a parent . . . knowing that I cannot and will not always be present when the teasing on the playground is occurring, when feelings are hurt, when they have climbed to far and they are just out of reach as they fall. It is this same feeling that I felt often at the hospital. People can only live for themselves. I can augment it, I can be there when I can, and I can try to make them comfortable, and I can use my knowledge to help solve problems. But the limiting reality is that I cannot be them! I am one of those people who has muttered the words, “why couldn’t this be me? I could handle this. I could make it through.” I guess this is what makes me a fighter. The will to get through whatever faces me, however I don’t recommend it for others, so much so I would rather take their place. Why? Because it is hard. Although my gut reaction is to want to take everything over, I must remember that really the journey through many of the trials are often the richest experiences of life. This week I was faced with the reality of having to let my patients, who I am caring for, live in the middle of what they have going on. Not to deny them this journey through illness. I have a role, in my new identity, that has the ability (should I choose to use it) to honor them by helping, relieving, comforting them through the journey. In a medical environment, where fixing things is often the desired outcome, I must remember the power of the journey. As a nurse I have a special ability to be with people along the journey, walking through the struggles and the successes, through the brokenness and the healing.
My struggle this week has been finding the balance of caring and alleviating problems with helping honor the role that sickness has in life and the natural progression of age and the slow decline of our bodies (and fast decline in the case of some of our patients). How do I honor these processes without submitting to their grim power?
I have felt this feeling of hopelessness often as a parent . . . knowing that I cannot and will not always be present when the teasing on the playground is occurring, when feelings are hurt, when they have climbed to far and they are just out of reach as they fall. It is this same feeling that I felt often at the hospital. People can only live for themselves. I can augment it, I can be there when I can, and I can try to make them comfortable, and I can use my knowledge to help solve problems. But the limiting reality is that I cannot be them! I am one of those people who has muttered the words, “why couldn’t this be me? I could handle this. I could make it through.” I guess this is what makes me a fighter. The will to get through whatever faces me, however I don’t recommend it for others, so much so I would rather take their place. Why? Because it is hard. Although my gut reaction is to want to take everything over, I must remember that really the journey through many of the trials are often the richest experiences of life. This week I was faced with the reality of having to let my patients, who I am caring for, live in the middle of what they have going on. Not to deny them this journey through illness. I have a role, in my new identity, that has the ability (should I choose to use it) to honor them by helping, relieving, comforting them through the journey. In a medical environment, where fixing things is often the desired outcome, I must remember the power of the journey. As a nurse I have a special ability to be with people along the journey, walking through the struggles and the successes, through the brokenness and the healing.
My struggle this week has been finding the balance of caring and alleviating problems with helping honor the role that sickness has in life and the natural progression of age and the slow decline of our bodies (and fast decline in the case of some of our patients). How do I honor these processes without submitting to their grim power?
Friday, March 28, 2008
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!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
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 !
"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 !
Thursday, March 6, 2008
“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.
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.
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