Friday after the Fair

Enjoying fresh-from-the-grease french fries at the State Fair.
We had a great time. The weather was perfect~ only arouned 74 with no humidity and a nice wind. Blue skies and nice people all around.

The kids rode rides ($3 a ride!), we saw many animals, we used Purell on our hands countless times, and we even had the chocolate milk in the cow barn. My dad (who is in the picture with the kids) was a little pissy about the Bottomless Cup being 50 cents now instead of 25, but he got over it and slammed two whole cups on top of the greasy pepper and onion-laden Italian sausage he had just before we got to the cow barn.
We left tired, happy, very full and kind of nauseas, but that's how you hope to leave the Fair.

Today I have a prenatal here at the house followed by a meeting with a local doula who wants to pick my brain about becoming a midwife, followed by looking at a local office space that's for rent.
Then I need to get S her walkie-talkies she's asked for her birthday and once home again, make the Laura Ingall's wedding cake we're having for her birthday tomorrow.
Did I mention we're having a Little House on the Prairie party?
Oh yes, we have bonnets for the girls and straw cowboy hats for the boys. We'll be churning butter, having cornbread, beans and hotdogs. Woo-hoo. I'll be Caroline Ingalls with tattoos, flip flops and over-sized sunglasses.

Our Annual Trip to the Michigan State Fair

Every year since I've been a mom, my dad has taken me and the kids to the Michigan State Fair. It's nice. I like it. I would never go on my own because it's pretty expensive: you pay $5 for parking, then a nice handful of money for each person to get through the gate, the food is expensive (and smells delicious in all of its greasy goodness), and you'd need to refinance something to get the kids on a ride.
However, when dad takes us, I become a minor again. He pays the way and we all wander slowly through all the huge old barns looking at pigs, sheep, hundreds of types of poultry and pigeons, and let us not forget the cow barn.
The cow barn is where you find the "bottomless cup of chocolate milk" for only 25 cents. My dad makes sure he has his quarters ready for the cow barn. The milk is creamy, sweet and very cold, but I can never drink the whole cup. There's something really disgusting about standing in a barn full of cows, their shit, and a large community of flies while drinking the cows MILK (which has been "improved" by adding chocolate and a load of sugar). I start to imagine there's hair in my cup and it's all down hill from there.
My dad on the other hand, slams down one cup like its a shot, then slaps down another quarter for his second cup; frowning at me for being such a wuss about drinking milk and smelling cow shit at the same time.
We went to the cow barn when little E was just a month and a half old and very actively nursing every 3 hours. I couldn't even let my dad buy my first cup of chocolate milk that year. There was always something about drinking another animal's milk while I was actively lactating that just made me sick.

Hmmm, so what's all this got to do with Joey Ramone?
One year the Ramones played at the State Fair. I had already seen them a handful of times by then, and the tickets were pricey to get into the fair. But my best friend was showing her horses at the fair so we had free entrance. I got there a little later than I said I would. I found my friend in the horse barn (complete in her horse shit-covered combat boots) and we heard the music start up. The fair grounds are huge and we had no idea where to go. So we ran towards the music, making a few dead ends on the way. We finally made it to the stage and it was brilliant! By far the best show I've ever seen. The sun was setting beautifully and when it got dark, all the carnival rides were lit up and circling around and around us while the Ramones played what seemed like a really long set. Joey Ramone, who was never one to blather on into the microphone between songs other than a simple "Thank you" at the end, actually said it was like being at Coney Island. And it did. It was so romantic, I swear I nearly cried.
Ahhh, summer time.

So that's my immediate associations with the Michigan State Fair: the Bottomless Cup of Questionable Chocolate Milk and the best Ramones gig ever played.

I *heart* Joey.
May he forever rest in peace.

Taking Submissions

Please consider submitting a piece of your fine work (1500 words or less) to The Birth Project. Deadline for the next issue is September 15th.
We are also looking for poetry, photos, birth stories, etc.

To find out more, go to www.thebirthproject.com

We're actually in the process of improving the website, and once it's up, we'll have a Submissions Wish List. On that wish list are some topics that are not all hearts and unicorns.
There's loss, miscarriage, struggles of the first year post partum, adoption, and much more that we're looking for. That's not to say we're looking for hard stories only, but the point of The Birth Project is to empower women, to give them a voice, to offer options for birthing, and to help everyone feel like they're doing the best they can with what they have.

If you are a birth junkie reading this blog, please pass this on.
Our zine is new (it only came out in January), but we're doing pretty well despite our newness. We have nearly 100 subscribers from all over North America, a few in the UK.
If you have an online business, you might consider advertising with The Birth Project.
Check out the website, and if you want a free issue, all you have to do is shoot us an email with your address and we'll send one your way ASAP!

*We're a poor zine. We can only pay for printed submissions with a free issue or two. It's all for the greater good, though. Birth bloggers and anyone who knows someone who's been pregnant before (ask your Mama!), check us out and help us pack another issue full of great stuff!

12 Year Anniversary

Me and G were married on this day 12 years ago.
Wow.
And,
lucky us.
To celebrate, we took the kids to a local Italian place (because I used my childcare today to attend prenatals and because we had 2 kids-eat-free coupons from the library for same restaurant). We had delicious food and desert. (Is that one or two S's? Can never remember.)

It was a really nice dinner. A nice day. I feel like we had our fun celebrating US last month when we got away for the weekend. I'm glad I finally figured out that it's up to US to make the time (and find any kind of money, even credit cards if need be) to get away together. It's worth it and necessary.

We've had a lot of ups and downs, especially after the kids came along. But we got our mojo down now. We're like a well-greased machine, the four of us, most days.

Happy Anniversary to my lovely Limey Boy. You're lovely and funny and still make me laugh every day. Good stuff.

gone is our Natty Dread

Yesterday after dinner I took the kids to Fantastic Sams for haircuts.
We went to the Heritage Festival or, "The Vegetable" as little E calls it, and 3 different people called him a girl. Granted, they were all over 60, but still.

See, E was completely bald for his first year and a half. A total blond cue-ball kid.
When he finally got hair, it grew in as this great mess of blond curls. A cross between Gene Wilder and a blond Bob Marley. For the last year or more, he's continued to have between 3-6 dreadlocks in the back that would only come out with lots of detangler spray, a comb, and screaming.

E turned 3 last month and had yet to have a hair cut. We tried last fall, but he freaked out.
Then when he started having seizures and he had to have the EEG and the MRI, we said we'd never cut his hair, EVER. That's because he was so damn traumatized and scared of having all those electrodes stuck to his head. It took both G and I to hold him down for the half hour it took to paste those damn things on his head.
Ever since then, if anyone touched his head, he'd freak out.

I admit though, as much as I liked his natty dreads, part of me was getting really annoyed by the bird's nest on his head. So I packed them up and off to the bargain cuts we went. S loves having her hair cut, "to the shoulders, with long layers" she told the woman. She's a very fashion-savvy soon-to-be 8 year old.

E just said, "I DON'T WANT MY HAIR CUT!!!!"
But I sat in the chair with him. I told the lady, "I don't care if there's chunks missing. He's gonna move a lot and he'll probably scream. Just do what you can. And I don't want the square-faced little boy cut. I like his sloppy hair, so make it shaggy and chunky, okay?"
E had a toy radio and a book. He sat pretty well on my lap, but had to push every little piece of hair off of his cape. It took about 20 minutes to finish. My arms were covered with his hair, but we finished up with a fairly decent hair cut.

When I brought the kids home, G complemented S on her long layers, and then we both just stared at E. Mourning his blond baby curls, mourning the dreadlocks and the bird's nest that he'd kept for so long.
Now he looks like a proper boy, not an androgynous blond fairy child.

He looks older. Gone is our baby. Right now, we're all a little sad but happy enough not to have to deal with the dreads.

Abruptio Placenta, Part 2

After the doctor walked away from us in the L&D triage, we asked why my client needed a Foley catheter NOW. The intern explained we needed it because while the baby was doing fine now, we needed to be prepared to take emergency action. Hmmm, all right.
It was another 20 minutes before they got us into a regular room. Once there, the Foley was inserted by a nurse. The Ben Stein Blond doc came back in, told my client to open her legs, and without telling her she what she was going to do, proceeded to insert her hand into her vagina. I was at my client's head, consoling her, "talking her down" and praying with her. My client arched her back in discomfort and the doc scowled for her to be still, she was screwing the electrode into baby's head to have a more accurate heart rate. WTF? She in and out of there before either of us had a clue what she was doing.

The nice nurse started asking a load of questions, apologizing along the way for the absurdity of the questions and for the length of time it was taking. Everyone was confused because my client wasn't even admitted yet, which pissed me off because we stood in the ER receiving answering stupid questions for 10 minutes while my client bled and bled and they STILL didn't have her in their system. During all this intake crap, the baby's heart tones were going up. From his normal 140s to a high 162. Okay. That's okay.
Every time we heard the tone grow faster, my client would look at me with pie eyes, "Is that okay?" Yes, 162 is okay. Then it went from the low 160s to the high 160s. Then into the 170s. No one seemed to notice or mind.
I don't understand the heart tone range in the hospital. I had another client go in because she felt like she hadn't felt her near-term baby move in 24 hours, panicked, and went to L&D for an ultrasound. Baby was fine, but the heart tones were in the low 170s. Everyone was fine with that.
As a midwife, you learn 120-160 is the normal range. That is our learned comfort zone. Does anyone know why 170 is acceptable in the hospital?

At any rate, the baby's heart tones then started going into the low 180s. It would dip down to the 150s, and then spike to 178, 182, 184. It did this for a full 20 minutes. My client in the meantime was freaking out. Partially from the circumstances of just being there, about to have another section, being asking ridiculous questions again, about WHY she didn't seek prenatal care. AARGH!!!
My head was pressed against her. Calm down. We're crossing one bridge at a time. You and the baby need to be kept calm and safe. We're here together and no one is going to take your baby from you. (She kept talking about how they would take her baby to the nursery and never give it back.)
When my client calmed down, the baby's heart tones came down to a reassuring 150-ish.
The nice nurse doing the intake pointed out how my client's calm effected the baby's heart tones and she should try to do her best to stay calm. My client liked that and stayed relatively calm, despite still gushing blood onto the bed. The baby too, stayed in a normal range, until...

The intern busted in the room after 10 minutes of calm, a full half hour after the baby started going into the 180s and says quickly and full of panic to us and the nurse, "We need to get her into the OR right away! Why doesn't she have oxygen on?! She should be getting oxygen. Look at those heart tones!"
We all looked at the monitor plucking away at 148. Uh-huh.
The nurse told her that once the mom calmed down, the baby's heart tones came down and had stayed down.
"I don't care! Put her on oxygen! We need to get her into the OR!"

That's what we had been thinking too. By this time, we had been in the hospital for an hour. And the 20 page intake was still going on: Has anyone in your family ever had heart disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes? Yes, who?
All grandparents.
Maternal or paternal? Great grandparents?
Meanwhile, we're changing the chux pad for the 4th time since we arrived in that room.

Another 15 minutes pass, and by this time the baby's heart tones have started to climb again. They've been in the low 180s for the last 10 minutes.
The Ben Stein Blond doc and the intern come in finally, along with the anesthesiologist and have my client sign the papers that release them from any fault while they're sticking needles into her spine and cutting open her belly, even though it has taken them forever to even get us into the OR.

We are wheeled down to the OR. My client wants me to come in with her. I'm given scrubs, booties, and a hair cap from a small, dinged-up metal locker with peeling paint and led to a bathroom to change. The bathroom is small, reeks of urine, and the door doesn't lock. I change as carefully as possible, without letting any of my clothes touch the filthy floor, then take my place in the chair in the hallway where they've told me to wait.

I wait and I wait. Next to me is some big clunking machine, with lots of tape holding it together. Next to the door of the OR is a huge piece of plywood with CAUTION tape all over it. It's a make-shift wall for whatever construction is going on. The floors are dusty with sawdust and grit.

After 15 minutes or so, I'm led into the OR. My client is there, strapped down to the narrow T-shaped table looking very pale and angry. The blue sheet is up high and resting on my client's chin. When she breathes in, it touches her nose. I push the blue guard away. My client complains about how silly it is to "protect" her from watching her baby being born, even through an incision. She wants to watch, but of course no one will let her. My client goes through various emotions quickly: from making small jokes, to crying, to digging her nails into her palms and growling in absolute anger.
The Ben Stein Blond doc is now chipper and happy, perhaps because she's now really in control. She's now asking my client in a sweet, high voice, "Are you okay, hon? You'll be seeing your baby soon!"
The doctor tells me through the sheet, that she thinks she sees a uterine rupture too. "That's what makes VBAC so dangerous."
I say, "Wow. She's had two previous VBACs. Do you really see a rupture?"
She says, "Umm, I don't know. I'll let you know in a minute."
(She never says anything more about there being a rupture... because there wasn't one at all, I'm sure.)
My client growls that she is not okay, she's losing blood and is being cut open. But no one comments to this.
I hear the OR nurses mumble under their masks about "the patient planning a home birth" and "how dangerous an abrupted placenta is".

At one point, my client moves her shoulders in discomfort, mashes up her face in pain and the anesthesiologist goes to add some more drugs to the mix. Another anesthesiologist tells him not to, "they're just pushing on her belly to get the baby out."
This prompts the BS Blond to tell me to stand up to see the baby being born. I stand and see his head is out. A fine color. Cord tight around his neck. He cries lustily before his body is even out. The intern is smashing her weight into my client's fundus to get his body out. Ack. Out comes the baby boy, who is still crying loud and clear and pinking up. They cut his cord immediately and tell me to sit down.
They take the baby down the hall. The baby nurse is sweet and gives us both a good feeling that she will do her best to nurture this boy until we get him back.

We wait for the long finishing-up. It's another 40 minutes or so before they get everything all closed up. My client is crying to see her baby. (They didn't even do the complementary Here He Is flash before swooping him down the hall.) We can still hear him crying now and then, and can tell he's just outside the door.

At the end of the surgery, when all the counting of instruments and rags have been completed (which is completely unnerving to me), the doctor calls me Andrea (which is NOT my name, but close). "Andrea, stand up. I want to show you this placenta and where it came away from the wall."
Hmm, I do want to see this. I love looking at placentas anyway.
Over the blue sheet I see a pink bed pan. In it is the placenta, large and healthy looking. In the doctor's hands, she's holding something else. I'm confused.
The doctor says, "Do you see this hole right here? That's what came away from the wall. Do you see how dangerous and big that is?"
The woman is holding a HUGE BLOOD CLOT IN HER HANDS!!! She's poking a hole through this blood clot with her gloved finger, telling me it's a PLACENTA!
Is she that stoned, or is she fucking with me like she would an intern?
I see her eyes follow my very puzzled eyes to the actual placenta in the pan and she says, "Well I think this is it. It's hard to be sure. Sit down now."

Lord have mercy on the hierarchies of the medical system! They are NUTS!

I couldn't tell my client any of this, because she was really writhing now. Feeling more and more sensation, panicking from having her arms strapped down and hearing her baby cry.

At any rate, the usual followed. She was put in recovery "for an hour alone to recover." We did get to see the baby and I got to hold him for her for about 7 minutes before they took him again. After an hour, they let one person at a time visit her. First her mom, then a family friend, then me. The mom and the friend had to go home to look after the other 6 kids who were with their great-grandma.
I said I'd stay.
The recovery room had no air conditioning. It must have been 84 degrees in there. There was a dusty fan blowing on my client. She was in a narrow, flimsy bed that looked like it came off the set of MASH. I have camping mattresses thicker than this "recovery" bed.
My client is sweating profusely and itching like mad from the numbing meds. She's thirsty and sick, throwing up into a bucket. The baby is with us, he's nursed and is sleeping. The heat of the room is terrible, it would make anyone nauseas. They tell us it's to keep the baby warm. We all know it's because this hospital is a dump and there are dirty fans parked all over the place.
They tell us she will only be in this room for 2 hours max.
My client looks white as a sheet. I ask a nurse about her post-op blood work. I want to know her hemoglobin. Trying to be snarky, the nurse wheeled around and said, "Do you know what it was BEFORE?" I went to my bag, pulled out her chart and her lab work from the U of M. I showed her her last CBC. "Her hemoglobin was low before, at 11.5, see? We working on getting that up all summer. But that's a pretty normal number for her."
The nurse seemed a bit shocked that despite my client not having any REAL prenatal care, I do have a whole chart and lab work on her.
"Oh. Well, those labs were done in early June. It's August now."
Whatever. Get your digs in. Women don't get routine CBCs in their last weeks of pregnancy in the medical system.
"I'd still like to know her hemoglobin if you have it," I say, smiling sweetly.

They ended up leaving us in that roasting recovery room for 4 1/2 hours. They did 3 heel pokes on "that huge baby" of 9# 6oz and they all came back fine for his glucose levels. They finally came back with some lab work numbers. Her hemoglobin was 8.5.
Wow. That's really low.
My client asked what we'd be doing at home for that. I told her I'd be sending someone to the store for liver, and feeding her every high iron thing I could.
The nurse perked up and said, "Oh, I can get you some food!"
She comes back with a tray of a high-sugar popsicle, a bowl of jello, and some ice chips. My client declines all of this.
Now tell me: how that will nourish a woman who has lost a ton of blood?
Madness, I tell you.

After asking many times, we finally get moved to a proper room. It's much cooler in there because the air conditioning seems to work somewhat. The room is old-fashioned. Stark white, two twin size beds, two TVs (that won't work unless you pay for them!). Nothing to read, nothing to look at on the walls. Once in the room and with a new IV (the old one went sub-cu, filling her arm with loads of fluids and making it grossly misshapen. She ended up with 4 IVs that all went sub-cu in 24 hours), my client cries for a bit. We hug and cry and try to process this crazy Hotel California hospital. I finally leave. She needs to sleep while the baby is conked out. I tell her to call if she needs anything that day, and to definitely call me the next morning.

**So this is all crazy, but it was a necessary surgery. The following is complete madness and infuriating.**

The next morning she is home by noon. She signed out AMA after a social worker came into her room in the early morning. The case worker wanted to know why she didn't seek prenatal care.
Again, my client had to tell her that it was her MIDWIFE who brought her to the hospital, who stayed with her during the surgery, and for 5 hours postpartum. All the staff had met me and questioned me. She has to reiterate over and over what "kind of prenatal care" a midwife gives.
From here, the social worker tells her that she knows she's an addict because her lab work came back positive for opiates, as did the baby's. And that mothers who are addicts don't get to take their babies home. And if that isn't enough, she can have her other children taken away too.
My client by this point is fuming mad. Demands to have her doctor called in.
The young intern comes in. My client tells her this woman is threatening to take her children away because of opiates in her lab work. Either they confused her labs with someone else or they are tampering with her records. My client demands to have her blood work taken again.
The intern asks to see the lab work the social worker is waving around, reads it, and then starts to apologize profusely.
Apparently, those labs were taken directly AFTER the cesarean. The opiates were from the SPINAL given to the mother.
The social worker shrinks, apologizes. Starts to explain how anyone could've made that mistake and that she wants to help my client get the proper assistance she needs for all her children.
My client tells her to get the fuck out of her room. Then she tells the intern to get the AMA waiver because she is leaving NOW.
The intern tells her last hemoglobin came back at 7.7 and her platelets were dangerously low. (However, the only "food" my client had received since surgery was chicken boullion!)
My client said she was leaving. And she did, with the scared intern pleading at her heels to stay.

Yesterday I visited my client and her baby at home. He's doing great. She's okay; sore and very pale still. I brought her a steak and liver pie, two jars of black bean soup, cream of wheat, a water melon and banana bread. EAT woman, EAT!

Despite my tone of anger while writing these posts, today I am sad about all of this. I really wish Michael Moore would've touched on the maternity system in SICKO.
I know Ricki Lake's documentary is out now, and Pregnant in America is coming too.

I have no problems taking a client to a hospital to receive care. Most woman are low-risk and can birth fine at home, but there are times when something else needs to happen, and I'm grateful we have the tools to help babies out safely. While we have a healthy baby and a marginally healthy mother, we're all scarred and frustrated from the lack-of-care we encountered in that strange little hospital.

Abruptio Placenta, Part 1

Sunday morning just after 3am I received a call from my client's mother (this client is 39 weeks pregnant, normally goes 2 weeks over-due with each pregnancy, and is having her 7th baby). Client's mother told me that the woman thought her water broke, walked to the bathroom in the dark, and once she turned on the light, realized that big "gush" was blood. Lots and lots of blood. "I'll be right there!" I said. Hung up, dressed and drove there praying and driving like a mad woman. There in 20 minutes.

We had known already that the placenta was completely anterior. She had had an ultrasound around 20 weeks, so we knew it wasn't low-lying. I couldn't hear any heart tones with the fetoscope through the entire pregnancy because of that placenta. Which is frustrating, because I do prefer the fetoscope to the doppler during prenatals, it's my second pair of hands when visualizing the baby's position.

At any rate, I arrived, put down my bag and listened for heart tones immediately. Baby was right there, in the 140s, chugging along. I palpated for abdominal pain (if there's a lot of blood with an abrupted placenta, the abdomen can feel constantly hard and paninful). No pain. No contractions. The client and her mother both cried tears of relief hearing the baby's heart tones.
Next I needed to see the blood. They had cleaned it up already. Shit! The mom told me I could see the towels they wiped it up with. Fine. She presented me with two large beach towels full of blood. Way too much blood. My client was wearing a pad and said she could feel more blood gushing out.
I (calmly as I could) told her I thought we needed to go to the hospital and now. That I thought the placenta had come away from the uterine wall and that both she and the baby could be at serious risk.
This particular client HATES HATES HATES hospitals. She immediately started crying tears of anger and frustration.
Here's a little background: She had her first three vaginally at the hospital. All of her kids have been big. Number 3 though, was a hair over 10 pounds and a shoulder dystocia (of course she was made to push flat on her back, feet in stirrups, scared doctors pulling on baby's head and not trying to free the shoulders~this retold to me by client's mother who witnessed the birth). The baby was born and was fine.
With baby #4, the baby was transverse in the last few weeks of pregnancy. They were also telling her the baby was huge. They scheduled a cesarean because the baby was sideways. Client showed up for her early morning c-section and ultrasound had found that the baby had turned head down. Client said great, she would go home and wait to go into labor. Wow-ho! They told her this baby is HUGE. They could tell by ultrasound. It was at least 10 1/2 to 11 pounds and they didn't want to risk another shoulder dystocia! Scared and confused, she consented to a cesarean. The baby was born fine. It took the staff two hours to tell her his weight, despite her asking over and over. When it came down to it, they finally had to tell her he was a whopping 8 pounds. Yet another unnecessary section done with scare tactics.

Needless to say, when pregnant with #5, she sought out midwives and planned a homebirth. That's when I met her as an apprentice. That birth went fine, except that she bled a lot immediately after birth. That was managed and controlled well and quickly and she did great. Baby close to 9 pounds.
#6 was also a homebirth with the same midwives. Baby was born with mec right at birth, but otherwise fine. Baby 9 pounds.

So back to Sunday morning and baby #7. We went to a local, small community hospital. I would've loved to go to the U of M hospital, but had no idea of how much bleeding was coming up and didn't want to risk the longer drive.
I called labor and delivery ahead of time to tell them we were coming, but we still had to be processed through ER. Which seemed to take forever. I told the woman receiving us that we needed to get an ultrasound NOW. My client, despite wearing a pad, had blood streaming down her thighs.
It still took nearly 10 minutes before they would stop with the bullshit paperwork and the printer that wouldn't work confusion before they had a security guard walk us back to L&D.
We were met there by a lovely nurse (and the nicest person we were going to encounter in that shitty little hospital that looked like it was plucked straight out of some impoverished eastern European country~ with it's taped together machines, hot stuffy rooms with dirty fans circulating stale air, and general filth along walls and floors). She was respectful to both of us and understood the planned homebirth and how hard it was to be somewhere we didn't want to be. She showed empathy and compassion throughout.
Next comes a young 20-something intern with deer-in-headlights eyes. She stammering questions and hopping from one foot to the other. My client introduces me as her midwife. The intern asks a few minutes later why my client chose not to have any prenatal care. I explained to her that I am the midwife. I've been giving my client routine prenatal care since the second month of the pregnancy. Everything has been fine until now. There's a lot of blood and I suspect her placenta has pulled away. We're here because we need an ultrasound.
The intern says, "Yeah, okay. But first I need to do a vaginal exam."
"With speculum," I say. Not to be a shit, but because the intern looks so afraid and if the placenta happens to be over the cervical os and she pokes fingers into it, we could have even more serious problems on our hands.
"Yeah, with a speculum," she says. And flits away.
She comes back with a speculum and bright light, and is followed by a bleach blond woman who looks like she was just woken from a qualude-induced slumber. I smile and say hello and she ignores me. The intern announces the blond as the floor doctor for the night. Then she inserts the speculum (and actually says what she's about to do before doing it~nice) and out comes a huge gush of blood, all over the floor and all over their shoes. The baby's heart tones have been fine through all of this.
Client is dilated to 2cm, water intact, no placenta over os that they can see.
Next they bring in an ancient, clunky, taped-together ultrasound device. We see the placenta from top to bottom. And near the top, but not on the margins, there is a silver-dollar size spot that has come away and the blood is just gushing past there with each pump of the mother's heart.
The blond doctor tells us in this flat, monotone voice (thin Ben Stein): "Your placenta has come away here. You could potentially lose a lot of blood and the baby could die. You can stay here or you can go home and have your home birth. My advice is to stay here and have a cesarean."
My client looks at me, hopeful at the prospect of going home. I tell her loud enough for all to hear: "Sweetie, this is serious. We can't have a home birth. The placenta could continue to pull away, and even if this was the only spot that abrupted, you are losing a lot of blood and you're not even in labor yet. I know you hate hospitals. But we come here when we need emergency care. We need to keep you and your baby safe and they have what we need. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be right here with you whatever happens."
My client begins to cry silently, and growl a bit in anger and frustration. The nice nurse apologizes for the situation and tells her she will make this go as smoothly as she can. The seemingly stoned doctor rolls her eyes and orders and IV and a foley catheter while walking away. No smiles, no sorry you've got shit luck. Nothing.
I wanted to smack her smug, mean face.

Bored and Bitchy

We are HOT and we are BORED.
And we are all whining a lot more than we should be.

I am done with summer. By the end of the first week of August, I am always ready for cool autumn days, baking without making the kitchen 95 degrees, and not sweating.
I think, no I know that I have OCD issues with sweating. I HATE it. I don't mind sweating if I am doing something productive like yard work, sex, or working out. What I hate is getting up from the couch to the kitchen to get a drink and having sweat drip down my back and belly.
And all those people who live in Michigan too who claim to LOVE summer and shush me for desiring cooler weather all happen to have marvelous central air systems and keep their homes at a comfy 74.
We have our thermostat in the kitchen. In the morning when I wake up it is generally 83 degrees. After I make toast (about 4 feet away from the thermostat), the kitchen is 85 degrees.
So imagine what turning on the oven does. We made cupcakes last night. The oven was on for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.
I'm ready for a little cooler temps.

We are fortunate to have window air conditioners in the house and they do help tremendously (in the rooms that they are in). However, the price of running the damn things is crazy. Like our winter gas bill.

What a terrible post!
I'll shut up now. I just needed to vent.

Life is one big spiral

Isn't that a beautiful cord? They don't all come out like that. Some are lumpy and bumpy and then some like this one, come out all swirly like a machine-made lollipop.
I love this pic, with the cord and then the purple, wrinkly, new-new baby feet to the right. This is a client of mine from the Spring. She just sent me a bunch of great birth photos to put on my website.

The class I taught went fairly well. I hope. While I was talking, I felt I talked fast. It was a combination of friends that I know and then some newer birth junkies who seemed quiet and shy. My apprentice came over today and said she thought it went really well, but then again, she would say that! No, actually she'd probably tell me if I sucked. :)
It felt good to be sharing information. When I was apprenticing (and even a year or two before) I read, and re-read anatomy books over and over again. For a while there it seemed I had a block in my brain that would prevent me from remembering the bones of the pelvis, the stupid pelvimitry measurements, and what hand motions to do next while performing a vaginal exam. Hopefully talking it all out (and in class 3 actually feeling them!) with a fake pelvis, some stories, and having everyone try it themselves on the plastic pelvis will make things a little easier for them to learn and remember.

Other than this...
I'm coming up to two women due this month.
S will be starting school in a month. E might be going to some kind of preschool in the fall, maybe.
It's hotter than hell these last few days and the next few coming. Around 97 with crazy humidity.
Poor G. His work called him at 3am to tell him they'd be starting work at 5:30am instead of 7am to try to beat the heat. He didn't go to bed until 10:30pm, so he was beat. Imagine working on a 2 mile square of blacktop; getting in and out of stinky new cars that have been sitting for days in the sun (maybe 125 degrees inside), driving them quickly onto extremely hot, metal trains, and then chaining them down. Finish that, jump down and get into the next line of hot, stuffy cars.
I hope that I can make enough money in the next few years that he can quit that place. Even if it's only to work some crappy office job. Not that he'd work an office job. Who knows? He should be a florist.
A florist with health benefits.

Then again, we saw Sicko a few weeks ago and were so down afterwards that we went to the bar for a beer to talk about moving to Canada or England so that our kids will have health benefits when they're older.

Okay, I should go to bed. I have a morning prenatal tomorrow and I have to take my kids to a friend's place across town because my mom isn't home this week.
I'm sure it will be a hectic, running late type of drive. We're out of the habit of fast mornings out the door.
Soon enough, we'll be doing it again. Every morning. Eating cereal as we watch Curious George on PBS. Me swearing to myself in the kitchen as I spill coffee on my shirt and hate myself for not making lunch the night before. E will be bed-head galore and plopped into his car seat in his pajamas while I yell at S for the 5th time to drag a brush through her hair.
Then we'll get in the car and listen to square, old Dick Purtan on 104.3 because the Volvo doesn't have a CD player anymore and we only want music in the morning. Dick Purtan tells corny jokes but he at least plays music. Everyone else talks, and me and the kids have no patience for that as we drive down Packard on weekday mornings.

mini vacations done, back to work

We've had two good weekends in a row.
One, G and I went away for 3 days without the kids. Stayed in Kalamazoo, went to 3 different breweries, a food festival, saw live bands, visited little coastal (L. Michigan) towns, and ate a lot of good food and stayed in a way-too-expensive hotel.

Second weekend, G and I, kids and MIL went to Lake Michigan for the day, swam and got sunburned, had a picnic. Stayed in K-Zoo again. Next day went to Holland and visited cheesy but family fun place, Dutch Village. Bought S a pair of wooden shoes.

Tonight I am teaching class one of three Well Woman Care and Pelvic Anatomy classes. Actually have 10 women coming to my house. I feel good about my packet of info and the class itself. I feel good that I will stay on track and not go off on too many tangents, PROVIDED no one asks me too many questions and gets me into chatty-patty mode.
I've never taught before, not officially. So I'm a wee bit nervous. Better take my gelsemium beforehand.