Butterfly Freedom and the D.I.A.

At the farmer's market a few weeks ago we bought a fat caterpillar for $10 in a little soft-mesh cage. We were given extra milk weed and a page of instructions to help it on it's way to becoming a butterfly.
Only 12 hours passed before the darn thing wrapped itself into a chrysalis. We waited 10 days before it emerged as a lovely Monarch butterfly. After letting its wings fully unfurl and dry, we let it go. It was pretty amazing. Little E was a little upset when he realized it wasn't flying back to us. Reminded me of helium balloons let go minutes after receiving them in the Trader Joe's parking lot. Up, up and away.

Friday night I got to go out to eat with my sister at a lovely Ann Arbor restaurant, sans children. I felt like such a big kid, I tell ya. Really it was nice. Hot food with no interruptions always impresses me though. When we came back, she took our kids back to her place for a sleep over!
G and I were able to get drinks with long-lost friends that night. It was fun and relaxing. One last hurrah before going back on-call.

Saturday we took the kids to the new and improved Detroit Institute of Arts using our free-from-the-library museum passes! I spent so many lovely afternoons at the DIA as a teen with my pal Vanessa. So even though they really did improve the museum, so many of the same beautiful paintings were still there, as I remembered them.
I must have been especially emotional that day, because I had to keep blinking back tears of gratitude for all the lovely things around us. I assume that's what people feel in gorgeous cathedrals. It was just this great overwhelming feeling of everything is beautiful. Sigh.
I want to go back alone so that I can take my time. There were at least 3-4 genres that I didn't get to because the kids were getting bored.
They did great though. We were there at least 2-3 hours. Little E got antsy first, and S predictably lost her sh*t when she realized I wasn't buying anything from the gift shop. (This child feels we must buy something any time we visit a place that sells things. Could be a store, a museum or even a freakin' bus stop, I swear.)
But they were both very well behaved and stayed interested in what we were seeing. I was actually really proud of them for being so chill and sweet in such a grown-up environment.

July is almost over. It was a nice,light month. Only 1 birth. All the July people had their babies in June and the last June person had her baby in July. August is fairly busy. Feels like I'm plunging back into the water again. Well rested though.
Off to bed now.

Black Eyed Peas

Ack, I woke up from a dream where I was chugging black eyed peas from a water bottle. In their canned juice.
It made me queasy in my dream.
I can't shake the sensation now.
I think I'm going to be sick.
I just planted black eyed peas in the garden on Sunday. Clearly I'm obsessing over how much I can put to use from our garden.

I will not be drinking black eyed peas. Ever.
How weird.

A Cabbage Patch Kid About to Be Born...

Well I'll be Georgia O'Keefe (in green)! Tell me what that looks like!

Things Hospital Staff Should Never Say

A few days ago I had to transport a laboring mom from home to hospital. Our two area hospitals are pretty nice to homebirth midwives. I don't think they always "get" us, but they try. And I've never been treated rudely. Indifferently by a nurse or two, but usually it goes fine.
This transport went fine, per usual expectations. It was a woman planning a HBAC who ended up with a hospital VBAC.
So I just have to vent a little about some things said. It's almost like when a person is pregnant and stupid strangers come up and you can't believe the shit that comes out of their mouths. "You're SOOOO big!"
As a midwife, I hear all kinds of not-so-smart comments, sadly it often comes from the mouths of doctors and other highly-educated folks.

So here's a list of dumb comments/occurrences:

After just having explained this woman had CNM care to 30weeks and then saw me just about every week from 30 to 41 weeks, the nice doctor said, "So has she had ANY prenatal care at all?!"

WTF do they think I do when I see my clients? Play board games? Read tea leaves and tarot cards to foresee when the baby will arrive? So I re-iterate to kind doctor, "YES, she saw CNMs until 30 weeks, then me weekly until now."

Doctor: "So how do you monitor the baby?"

Me, trying soooo hard not to roll my eyes: "With my hands, with a doppler, just like you."

Doctor: "Has this woman had ANY lab work?!" (After I had just given her a sheaf of lab work.) I go through the papers she's still holding to point out, here's her CBC, Hep B status, STD status, blood type, she had 28 week rhogam, etc...

Okay, so now the woman is actively pushing. She wants to squat. They let her do it once before telling her she needs to come down onto her back (you know they don't make women go flat on their backs anymore, that's archaic! They allow her this bizarre semi-sit with her upper body at a mere 30 degree angle. Just enough not to be totally FLAT). "Why?!" my client asks.
The answer (from a resident): "Well it's not safe for you to be upright when the baby is born!"

So my client goes onto her back and pushes. Baby's heart rate dips after a contraction. They give client oxygen and tell her to roll on her side, to get her heavy uterus off her vena cava so that baby's heart tones don't dip down. AARGH!!!
I tell her to stay there, to push on her side, it's better for baby.

Oh, another thing I HATE to hear from docs and nurses: "Get mad! That's it! Get mad and push your baby out!"
I have yet to see a woman ANGRY when pushing, unless of course, people are saying really dumb things around her or continually sticking their hands in her vagina.

The resident removes bottom portion of robot bed and tells my client she needs to scoot down 3 inches, you know, so that all the mess can be caught in the handy-dandy biohazard bag. Heaven forbid they see the woman's needs as more important than their own. So poor woman grunts and inches to the end of the bed. "Why do I need to be down here?!" she asks.

"It's safer this way," the nurse answers. "And it's easier for the doctor to catch the baby." !!!!!! Well, I guess they're honest if nothing else.

I was so tempted to say, "I don't know how I catch all those babies at home without these fabulous beds! Most of the time, the mom's bum is a few mere inches from the ground! Imagine how unsafe that is! I could drop the baby!"

Someone please tell me how pushing on a 2 1/2 foot wide hospital bed that's been lifted 4 feet into the air, with it's bottom half removed, makes for a safer catch?

So after a bit more pushing, a beautiful baby was born, healthy and pink.

The doctor actually listened to the mom and didn't cut and clamp the cord right away. They waited 5 minutes before it became flaccid. However, they did give mom an immediate dose of Pitocin (ridiculous routine for 3rd stage "management").

After a few minutes with mom, the nurse takes the baby away to clean her off. The nurse is routinely refused permission to give baby Vitamin K or erythromycin. Not much to do then. But she keeps baby under the warmer to "stabilize" her. Lo and behold, 10 minutes later, she's concerned because baby's temperature dropped (laying naked under a toaster), and you know, we don't know this mom's GBS status and this could be a sick baby. Bloody hell. The wise mama just said, "Let me hold her."

And you all know folks, the baby's temp was miraculously up and normal in 5 minutes.

So as grateful as I am that this mom and baby are both healthy and well, I can't help but be annoyed by the stupid routine happenings in labor and delivery. I'm grateful too, that as a midwife, I'm treated well and not like a barbarian. And I realize that they just don't know that the kind of care we give is similar to what they give (only continuous and longer and more respectful, ahem).

But I honestly really liked the doctor (the two residents and the nurse made me a bit crazy, but the staff OB was great). She was very sweet to all of us and made efforts to keep considering me, as a midwife in the process of this woman's birth.
I had never met her before and thought I'd try to talk to her face-to-face at a later date. I just learned yesterday that this particular doctor is leaving town to move across country. That our homebirth transport was her last catch in Michigan. Her last day at work here.
Imagine that.

My baby turned 4 this week

Little E was born on July 2, four years ago. Sigh.
He's still my little Little.

He's sweet and funny. He's kind to his sister and most of the time, his friends (he's 4, they don't hide their frustration or impatience all that well).
His big sister had just turned four when I got pregnant with E.
So the question the past few weeks has been, should we do it one more time?
It doesn't help that I'll be turning 35 in a few months and I'm having my own mortality checks with that. Squeeze in one more baby, or call it quits and enjoy these bigger, more independent children?

I'm constantly torn between falling in love with a newborn (I get to see a lot of pregnant moms and new babies), and then doing a 2 week postpartum visit and being reminded of how challenging it is to have a new baby.
I get my fill of sleepless nights as a midwife. It's so nice to be able to come home and sleep, uninterrupted. To not have to pump breast milk half-way through someone's labor and continually worry if my baby at home has enough milk to see him through. Those were fun days, but I'm glad they're over.

But being pregnant is sweet. Giving birth is lovely. Newborns smell so good!

Another admission of mortality-check, must-raise-something-new guilt: I've been to the humane society at least 3-4 times in the last month, hankering over dogs that need a home.

I'm so transparent.

In other news, everyone that was due to have babies in June and July have done so!
Attended a lot of nice births, including two VBAC moms who had vaginal births. One of them having had two previous cesareans, had an amazing primal birth where she just went to Laborland and let everything come and go and pushed her baby out seemingly effortlessly.

So now I have at least 2 weeks completely off-call from births! This is wonderful! It happens twice a year or so. We're fairly broke but that's okay.
We're equipped with a productive garden and a city pool pass.

Note to Mo: will do your meme soon! I never have time to blog anymore!