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.

Back to the Grind

Okay, it is time for an update . . . so here goes. The summer semester finally ended and instead of taking my needed time off I travels to all corners of the United States. Directly after my last exam we headed out on an all night road trip across the upper US to Boston while my sister was in labor to get there in time for the birth of my first nephew. I was not actually at the birth and there was a lot of mayhem which included much pain for Marcie and a nice three day vacation for the baby in the NICU. Alas, we visited with family and enjoyed ourselves. From their we headed back to Chicago for five days before heading to AZ to visit Paul’s family. We enjoyed our five days in the desert, where we in turn left our children for another five days while we explored the Northwest in beautiful Seattle. During our time there we gathered with many old and new friends at a gathering surrounding ideas of missional living and community. Then we headed back to Chicago with three days to prepare for school to begin for a first time preschooler, kindergarten and a return nursing student. Those days were full of school supplies and doctors visits. And then we plunged right in to the next phase of GEP (Graduate Entry Program).

I have been much more excited about his semester, because it holds within it the true beginning on my journey to midwifery. I am in a Maternal and Child Health class which is all about women and childbirth and pediatrics. So this was a welcome relief for me from “med-surg” . . . the bastion of nursing, or some might consider themselves the “real nursese’. So alas I am making my decent after just completing a 5 week rotation at a Chicldren’s Hospital, I will now take on the mentally ill on a Mental Health Ward for the next five weeks and then I will head into Labor and Delivery and maternity units. So that is the blueprint of my semester, of which I am ¾ of the way done and excited about that.

This semester has brought with it much more doable pace of life. We have needed it. The kids have ended up loving Catholic school and consider it a bad day when they are not left in aftercare. I have already been called a “mean mommy” for not leaving them there until it is dark. I am very fortunate to have such social and people-loving children who value these kinds of experiences or I might be inclined to feel a little guilty.

Alas, I am looking forward to the next weeks and then one final nursing semester. Hopefully within a couple of weeks I will begin to have many more birthing stories and fun midwifery kinds of facts for us to discuss.

Where for art thou summer?

. . . This is where I have spent most of it: Holed up in my office studying and doing assignments when I wasn't visiting various nursing experiences for my Community Health Rotation. (After taking pictures of the kids, Paul felt it appropriate to continue to document my nursing experience) I enjoyed it, but the semester has been twice as hard as I anticipated and it is so hard to stay focused when everyone else appears to be at play.
Some of my favourite experiences in community health were being able to spend two solid days with midwives at a public health department. It was great to actually experience what my days will be full of eventually and to actually feel like I am in fact developing usable knowledge on my journey to midwifery.
I was also fascinated to find out that I love the end of life as much as I love the beginning. I had several inpatient and home hospice experiences. I love the sacredness of death and the ability to help people to move on in grace and peace. It was also amazing meeting families that were helping their elderly stay at home while they were passing, what a great opportunity to give them their grace and dignity and normalize the second experience, besides birth that we are all privy to.
We also visited a variety of social service settings, my personal favourite (to many of you who know my passion about community and communal living will not be surprised) was a communal living faith community JPUSA. It is a 250 person commune. One of their expressions is to house about 35 older adults that need assistance. They provide their meals and some health services to them, as well as providing a community of which they are valued members.
I am now back in the hospital medical-surgical floor and I show up there three mornings a week at 6:30am-2pm. I ride the train down with one of my classmates. We are at Cook County Hospital (you know where ER is set). It serves the poorest of Chicago. It can be a pretty depressing place, but it has also been a place where I know even our newfound nursing passion is appreciated amidst the constant buzz of a floundering hospital.
Some of you have asked me to outline my days more. So to sum up my summer, I have spent Mondays in a classroom from 8:30am-4pm. Then Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays I have been in the hospital. And then evenings and weekends are studying and catching up with the family. It has been an amazing summer having my younger sister Lorie here to be with my kids while I pursue this. She has blessed and honored me in many ways going the extra mile to help out around here and making this part of the journey that much more bearable.
I have three more weeks, until I get my first long break (a whole month). Each day I feel a little more like a nurse. People have begun to ask me my opinions about all sorts of stuff . . . I still don't feel like I know much, but I am always eager to try and to serve with my newfound skills and knowledge in whatever way possible.

So this is what I wish I could have been doing more of this summer . . . but at least I have made some occasionally sweet family memories in the middle of all of this.

Celebrating the Big 10

On May 30th at 11:30am Paul and I celebrated our 10 years of marriage together, by traveling to Western PA so I could sing at a friend's wedding. Nothing like a new marriage to celebrate 10 years. My friend Kate's mother was so sweet and they celebrated us at the rehearsal dinner. It was so sweet. It was a fun weekend in the county. We got to experience one of Frank Lloyd Wrights masterpieces -- Fallingwaters. And we stayed in a lovely B&B.

Interesting Article

This was an interesting article I came across today about a woman being turned down for insurance for having a previous Cesarean and the insurance company siting this puts her in a higher risk catagory for various health related issues going forward. More and more it is apparent that we are headed back for more natural birth processes as we figure out that these interventions are costing us lots of money, and obviously are major surgery that have re- precautions for other health issues going forward.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/health/01insure.html?_r=1&ref=health&oref=slogin

Exciting Moments on the Road

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.

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.