quite a week

The weather has been so perfect lately. It's 9am and 55 degrees. It's like nice September days. I love it. It was only 76 or so yesterday with no humidity and a light breeze. I could wear jeans and not sweat to death. Perfect Amanda weather.

So yes, quite a week. I woke up today with this insanely light and joyful heart. I usually wake up just fine, but this morning I could have donned a long, swishy skirt and twirled about on a Swiss mountaintop singing.
Sunday night/Monday morning I attended a beautiful hospital birth. It was with a CNM attending. The L&D nurse looked familiar. Turns out she was at a homebirth I attended last summer for one of her friends. She told the CNM that I was a midwife. The CNM asked me out of the blue if I was a midwife and I'm sure I stammered, and then said, "Um...yeah... Yes, I am."
That's when she told me about the nurse recognizing me. At any rate, this CNM spent almost the entire labor with us, supporting the woman and being so sweet. I'm not sure if they were very slow and she chose to do it. Or (and here I go being cynical) if she wanted to prove that CNMs could really provide the midwifery model of care. Well let me tell you, she did just that. She was awesome. And so was the mother (who I should be praising here). This particular CNM works with the midwife who caught my Sarah 7 years ago and who also gave me exclusive, wonderful care. I love this hospital while a lot of others don't because it's Catholic and it's not cool to be Catholic, etc. I think the Vatican is nuts too, but I've always had great care and experiences there.
While at the University hospital, it feels like one is giving birth in the middle of the mall food court. Strangers coming and going, and just a lot of bustle. Not to mention loads of interns and residents and bad communication, leading to no one knowing whats going on. They have CNMS too, but too many of them, so that clients complain of not meeting them all before their birth. How it resembles an OB rotation, etc. At any rate, it was a lovely birth with real care. Not lip service and pretending to give all the options. The real deal resulting in the most gorgeous girl with lovely Angelina Jolie lips.

We spent most of this week finishing up my home office and for such a small room it looks so great. I'm so proud of my husband and appreciative of his obsessive nature when it comes to projects. (It normally annoys the hell out of me in day to day living, but the man does great work and doesn't stop til its done.) Now all I need are some clients to help me appreciate this office!

I finally received a letter from NARM telling me my portfolio has been accepted and that I can move on to the next step, which is setting up a date for the skills exam. The closest evaluator is 3 hours NW. I'll have to figure this date out soon so I can start fretting and obsessing over it. And with much luck and lots of money, take the written exam in February, which doesn't seem far off at all.

I attended an open forum on birth in this century, concerning sky-rocketing c-section rates, epidurals and the unfortunate distrust most women in this country have in their bodies. It was surprisingly well attended, and thankfully not just birth workers (church preaching to the choir thing). Their were a lot of "consumers" putting in their two cents, which made it interesting. I came away from it mildly annoyed but for various reasons that I won't get into here. It was a cool event though. And I got to see this lovely woman and her sweet mother that I love. I attended both of this woman's homebirths and got to see her 7 month old baby, that I haven't seen since the day he was born.

I started doing a small job of assisting this one elderly couple with household activities and driving yesterday. They are an incredible couple. In their mid 80s and they're so amazing and have had such full lives. When I think about how old they were in such a such year and what they were doing, I'm just shocked to realize how much one can stuff into your life. Seriously, compared to my grandparents (whom I never had relationships with~none of them liked children and ignored us or frightened us), this couples has lived 3 life times. I do this job for 3 hours every Friday afternoon, yesterday being my first.
I have hopes that working with the elderly will get me over my general discomfort I have around old people. I didn't see my grandparents much as a kid, but they certainly instilled in me this fear and even loathing for the elderly. From my loud, stinky, drunken paternal grandfather to my Mommie Dearest-esque maternal grandmother~ blech, not good experiences. I'm ashamed to say that I almost had an epiphany of sorts that: Hey! Old people are just older PEOPLE! I haven't been around any old people in so long that I've never given it any thought. That my views of them from my 10 year old self are just views of the 4 grandparents I knew and never really liked. They just weren't the best characters. At any rate, we shall see where this takes me. But working with them for just 3 hours yesterday definitely has played a hand in my waking up feeling so happy. (See, it was a little epiphany.)

I had to go to the ER yesterday for a briefly scary incident (not concerning my health) that turned out wonderfully fine. But while I waited for th receptionist in the ER room to get off the phone for a maddening 10 minutes, my pastor from church walked in. We both has this "What the hell are you doing here?!" look on our faces. She is an awesome woman and pastor. She talks about her own questioning of God, her own lack or faith and that makes her sermons so palatable to me. I was totally full of fear that I cried a few of the smallest keep-it-together tears as she hugged me. What relief to see her there! She was visiting an elderly woman from our church who had had a stroke. But seeing her there felt totally heven-sent to me. I was a wreck. However, as I said, everything was fine in a matter of minutes. I did feel a little guilty about not having been to church in months. My only reason being Eamon is a complete nut in there and wants to run all over. So it's just not worth going. I go there for me and take the kids not to indoctrinate them with anything, but to get some peace myself and if they get it too, then great. :) Pastor N. said they had more babies in the congregation now and are re-establishing the nursery. So I think I'll try to go this Sunday. If only to tell Nora everything worked out well and to see how the sweet woman with the stroke is doing.

All right. I need to get away from the blog world. The kids are up and trying to make their own food.