Fingerprints All Over My Heart
Day 53
So many wonderful births these last few days. Once again we are back to the pull of a "Midwife's Moon" and it is glorious! I am basking in the light of this ministry of ministries! I am so, SO blessed!
I am resting after a slightly difficult birth. The baby was asynclitic and had one of the biggest caputs that I have seen in this country. The father was wonderfully supportive every moment, and the mother was uncomplaining though I saw her wipe away multiple tears and beads and beads of sweat. The most wonderful part was when the father asked two different times if he could pray for his dear wife and unborn baby. We all said yes right away and we all prayed together. Once again I am in “midwife church” and yes God was very much in the room, but He always is. Later he asked again to pray and I said “Pray brother, we are all behind you, we will all pray!” He looked at me so gratefully (they were young, only 23 and 24), and then he stretched out his hands and prayed with wonderful passion and strength for his sweet young wife. The baby was born rather stunned and floppy and the couple seemed a bit stunned themselves, especially when they saw their little daughter’s head. It was so swollen! After I placed the wet, toneless baby on her mama's tummy, I was drying and rubbing the baby and encouraging them to hold on to and talk to her. I saw the father get a hold of himself and reach down and gently cup his baby’s still wet and bloody head in his palm and speak gently to her. She instantly coughed and breathed, and began to pink up. Ahhh…. I thought, she knows her father’s voice… Mother and baby are fine and the swelling is already subsiding. The sweet baby girl is a carbon copy of her gorgeous mother and the father has stars of love in his eyes for “his girls”.
A couple of days ago I did my first set of sutures on someone who was terrified and fought me every minute. Poor girl, she had to be coached through the whole thing and we still had to help hold her legs open and still so I could fix her up. It wasn’t pain so much as terror at what I was doing. Of course it was so difficult that it took longer than it should so I am sure she felt the last couple of pokes from the needle (guilt, guilt, guilt!), but I was so close to being done I figured she could either feel the 2 or three pokes of the suture needle or the 2 or 3 pokes of the lidocaine needle, both were going to hurt and the lidocaine was going to sting besides. That was a good experience nevertheless for I learned how to suture a jagged tear, and I learned how to suture under pressure, in a hard to reach place.
On another birth I learned a few variables in position changes to help get a rather stuck asynclitic baby to come down into the pelvis. The midwives here have several things they try: full squat, side lying, lithotomy (doulas and midwives all know that despite it’s bad rap, there are just some moms who want to birth in this position and who will only fully relax enough on their backs to let the baby come down), and McRoberts. They are patient and gentle, and if they see a position is causing too much swelling or no progress they will try something else. I work very hard at not letting my former experiences invade my thinking. What I mean by that is this: I have had those experiences, they are mine forever. This is a new set of experiences, and if I want to own them fully I must totally lay down my “superior student knowledge” (I hope you know I say that with dripping sarcasm) and watch and learn from these women every golden grain of knowledge I can glean. Yes, I have studied all the suggested textbooks; yes, I have taken innumerable classes and seminars on the subject; yes, I have my own philosophies on just about any area of this wonderful art of midwifery. The point is, that it would be utterly ridiculous for me to travel halfway around the world so I could use the knowledge I already have. I came to learn THEIR ways, I came to see THEIR 20 years of experience in action. Combined it is about 100 years of experience and it is very impressive to see it in action. Do they do it all according to the latest evidence based practices? If you are going to ask that question then maybe you should just stop reading this right now, for you have already missed the point of this post. They do what works, what works for them, with this particular demographic of women, what they have learned through time and experience, from kneeling at the feet of thousands of women. You can’t buy that kind of empirical knowledge but if you are very, very careful and very very wise maybe someone can pass it on to you. And if you are one of those really lucky apprentices you wisely shut your mouth and reach HARD for the baton and finish this most fantastic of races. It is a race that is being won every day across the globe by teams of midwives and apprentices. The race to keep the art of midwifery alive and functioning in a rather strange and complicated modern medical system. Onwards and Upwards Girls! Onwards and Upwards!!!