Fingerprints All Over My Heart:
Day 52.
In the home stretch and feeling mixed emotions. I am missing my family hugely at this point, but I know that I will miss these lovely days, these lovely people, Jeri and family, my fantastic midwives and my dear sister interns so very much. I have much to accomplish in the next few days and feel the weight of that laying heavy on my shoulders. I do not know how to reconcile all the mixed up feelings swirling around inside of me and the inner storm stole away much of my sleep last night This is made more difficult by an actual storm of rain that began last night and continues still and a cold that has been plaguing me for the last two days. I am hoping today will be the worst of it. My chest and head feel heavy and sluggish. It has been raining since last night and it is still falling relentlessly. I keep expecting that sweet cool dessert air that comes with Arizona rains but the air is close and humid and I feel a bit suffocated. No patients today with the rains, but the change in the barometer may bring some labors. I have much paperwork to finish tonight but for now I think I will take care of myself with a short nap. I know that so much of what I am processing needs to be written down, but for now I will rest. More later.

Fingerprints All Over My Heart
Day 48
Learning lessons that are oh so important. Mostly about different cultures, personalities and relationships. Learning that when I speak, those words leave my lips…. travel through space (and time) and lands in the ears (and hearts) of others, but the variables of what the other person may think I meant are infinitesimal. Learning that when another person says something to you and it travels back across the room that you may hear something totally different than what they actually said and meant. I want to be the kind of midwife who can listen with her heart, her mind, with relevant cultural sensitivity, with relevant “personality” sensitivity. I want to do this in a way that helps me to serve others and still fulfill the calling of the powerful woman that God wants me to be… a woman of Virtue! (for those of you that don’t know it, when the bible talks about the woman of Virtue it is the same term as mighty man of Valor. I want to be a wise warrior woman, fighting FOR women, fighting FOR midwives everywhere, fighting FOR apprentices everywhere…. those are my true battles. When other issues arise it is only the enemy's way of keeping my eyes and heart off of the really important things. Those “things” aren’t things at all of course, but people. People are who I want to serve… who I need to serve… who I am CALLED to serve. Whether they are my sister students/midwives, my beautiful birthing mamas, their families or those sweet babies arriving earthside, or my own circle of loved ones, this is what My creator has made me for, and it is the most wonderful “job” imaginable!
Today there was the most lovely woman that came in to have her baby. It had been a long journey for her and she had started labor three times only to have it stop again. I had already spent one long night on labor watch with her and so was excited for her that she was finally in active labor. Through it all, she smiled, and Smiled… AND SMILED! Her smile was so great and so deeply genuine! Her husband and little boy were with her and they were all equally happy and contented, even with the extended laboring. I will forever have the picture of them in my head with her on the birthstool, her husband right behind supporting her and curling into her, and their little two or three year old boy nonchalantly leaning on dad and playing a video game on their phone as the baby begins to emerge. Birth happens folks, and it is a wonderful thing when it is part of the fabric of life. The baby was good sized with cherubic features and a lovely contented nature. The mom had a couple of minor issues afterward that dictated a longer postpartum watch but what a great blessing! The family and I had wonderful conversations and they asked many questions. We segued easily into learning about each other’s families and I feel blessed to have a little peek into this beautiful family’s lives.
God is teaching me things… good things, hard things, painful things, humbling things, beneficial things, growing things, selfless things, maturing things, joyful things, BLESSED things! Thank you, thank you for my daily lessons!

Fingerprints All Over My Heart
Day 46
Sorry about the “radio silence” folks, sometimes the ol heart and brain need a break. It has been a long time since I wrote so what I have for you are lots of snapshots coming to mind as I sit and remember…
Moments of hilarity:
Rachel F. running out of the apartment, dashing up the stairs in her pj’s with bra in hand because the text message she received made her think the mom was pushing….. And me, tearing out of the house behind her and running through the yard… also in my pj’s. (we made it!)
Me being so tired that I fell asleep (and slowly tipped over onto the other bed) charting heart tones….
Rachel F. being so tired that she starts rambling about things that make no sense to the mama…. coming back to herself she hears her self saying to the mom who is pushing on the birthing stool… “for weeks and weeks”… (and then wonders what else she just told this mom…ha!).
Me being so slap happy tired that I ask a laboring mama to “come in and sit down please”…. in Spanish. Then I am trying to figure out why every one is staring at me like I have grown a third eye.
Rachel F…. after waiting and waiting for the head to appear thought she had missed it somehow when she saw in a split second the whole dark head out but off to one side, but then realized she had mistaken the polished edge of the birthing stool for the baby’s head….
Moments of profundity:
Trying to find a way to deal with a young woman (who we were sure had been abused in the sex industry) through her labor… how to help her feel in charge of herself, while at the same time make her feel safe and cared for…. (Oh God, give me wisdom).
Telling her to show us what she wanted… and when words failed her she took my hand and guided it to the place on her body that hurt the most and showed me exactly how hard to press…. ahhh… Now she is my teacher, and I am her student.
Being near her for hours, feeling her humanity, her frailty, looking at her beautiful young face and the uncertainty that lived there…. uncertainty for her life, uncertainty for her baby, uncertainty for any kind of future… ah but there is strength inside her as well…. nothing for me to do but be near her as she labors…
Moments of pity:
Looking down on her legs there are scars, upon scars… and sores, upon sores…. some are insect bites, some are from some kind of abuse and look suspiciously like cigarette burns (indeed, some are open and weeping sores), some are from some kind of eastern “treatment” of folk remedy (the cure here is apparently as bad as her original affliction).
Hearing the baby’s heart rate go too low, then too high, then settle into a very non reassuring rhythm, I come to the hard decision that I will not be able to see this poor girl through the end of her journey, though I want to with all of my heart. I know that the priority is her safety and the baby’s safety, and this isn’t going to be the safest place for her.
During transport hearing her call her “boyfriend” (perhaps, also perhaps her pimp, or owner) and tearfully beg for help as we are driving. He is uninterested, and keeps hanging up. She calls him back again and again and tells him to come quickly and bring money. It was very sad.
Moments of insecurity and self-doubt: Did I wait too long, did I not wait long enough? Should I have tried harder to get her through her delivery? Or perhaps I should have made the call earlier (lots of extenuating circumstances so it was a hard call either way)? Talking it through with the midwife after and realizing that I had done all right. This girl’s journey is what it is and I fulfilled all that I could according to the scope of practice here. Although my heart wasn’t at ease (because I love so hard when I love, and OH! How I wish I could gather some of these girls in and heal their wounds!), still I did my work as the gatekeeper of safety and got her the care she needed under circumstances.
Moments of homesickness: Laying in bed alone in my room later… the tears are running and I am thinking how good it would feel to… ride in the car and sing at the top of my lungs with my Jordann… sit in my living room and listen to my brilliant Trey explain some mystery of the universe to me,… sit in the rocking chair with my Khloé molded to my body as I rock… and softly sing…. lay in my own bed with my husband’s body pressed into my back, his breath on my neck, and feeling his love all around me….
Yesterday:
Standing in line to buy some food, and looking at all the foreign dishes and trying to figure out what I want… I am struck in a moment: I WANT to go home… I WANT to sit at my Sunday dinner table and eat Mexican food with all my kids and grandkids… this is what I WANT! I choke back my tears and order a strange tasting burger, and eat a strange too salty fries…. Almost done, I tell myself… finish well Margie… finish WELL!

Fingerprints All Over My Heart
Day 39 Part 2
Cannot resist posting again. Just had a baby born in the caul. To those of you who do not know what that means it means the baby was born inside the membranes. The baby was out to her feet before it burst and as I brought the mama up I simply undraped his first "blanket" revealing his perfection to us all! Lovely, simple, perfect birth for this mama of four. She had only been in the building for about 10 minutes or so when we began to see the clear, beautiful "crystal ball" issuing forth from her body. I am so, so blessed! She is vibrant and already up eating, and the baby has had a little "nip" of colostrum and is peacefully drifting off to dreamland. I know in some ways it is not a good picture of the typical birth, but all midwives will see these sometimes and what a huge rush, affirmation of our principles, and blessing they are! Good job mama, good job baby and good job birth team! We all did well!

Fingerprints All Over My Heart
Day 39
I am not sure if anything will come of this, but I have shared the story of Ate (pronounced Ahh Tay) Beth. She is a beautiful hard working mother of 8 children who was sold into the human slavery market as a child herself. She doesn't remember her family, but the people who "bought" her taught her some skills that have helped her survive along with her own indomitable spirit. She is smart and has a wonderful work ethic herself, but also has a child who is graduating from high school very soon. She is very concerned because she doesn't have enough to pay for her daughter's first year of college. Through our conversation I came to understand how proud she is of her daughter (whose grades are excellent). This girl wants to become a teacher. There is so little chance for some of these people to rise above their level of poverty, even with intelligence and a wonderful work ethic. But for a few who could possibly achieve the credentials then there could be a difference made. The amazing part is this girls first year of college would only cost about $500 dollars. Cheap to us, but a fortune for this woman who charges a measly 6 bucks for an entire weeks laundry. And she washes it out in a bucket all by hand. She works 7 days a week for various people but labor is very cheap here, so between all of her various children and the cost of living she cannot seem to get ahead. I wonder if among my teacher friends, and all my friends and family if we couldn't make a difference and at least help pay for this girl's first year. What do you say folks? 10 dollars? 20? More... ??? I am going to try to scrape something together before I leave, because this woman inspires me so... and I am sure her children are all amazing despite the hard hand that poverty has dealt them. Just a thought... just a thought!

Fingerprints All Over My Heart

Day 37

Days of frustration and anxiety are hard on a girl. I have come to a conclusion: Computers were put on this earth to make me crazy! Actually it’s not really the computer per se, but rather the large conglomeration of paper work/logging/evaluations, etc. that are converging here during this time. To further my sense of frustration I will forget how to enable some certain feature in a program, or how to get to a certain place online that I am supposed to complete some task at, or even get stumped in searching out some basic things on google for instance (how many ways CAN you re-word a question before you hit on the magic combination of words?). Then I will have some random midwifery question come my way and although I know I have gone over that subject a thousand times I cannot form an intelligent informed answer at all. This creates a very deep well of fear inside of me. I think to myself  “Have you wasted your own time and your family’s time, not to mention so many resources on this journey, only to find yourself in the final stretch and not be able to finish?” Perhaps all students of every discipline feel such moments (hours? Days? Weeks? Years?) of pure insecurity in their ability to finish the course set before them? All the responsibilities on my shoulders at this time seem so overwhelming some days, and I feel the stress of being constantly behind and guilty for not being able to stay caught up. The old familiar, twin and equally ugly specters of low self esteem and insecurity become my constant companions at such times and I find that they walk so close as to cause me to stumble often.

Yesterday I had a young teenage girl here in labor. She was painfully shy and withdrawn. There were several things that told me that she was in some ways pretty clueless about what she was about to go through. For instance, she didn’t bring any sanitary supplies, seeming confused when I asked her about it as to why she would need them. She didn’t want no remove her underwear, and seemed completely shocked when we had to check her dilation (part of the admitting protocol here). It took me back to my own scared (try terrorized!) 14-year-old self, and the complete shock and strange sense of violation and betrayal I felt when it was all over with. We asked her if she had understood all that she learned in the childbirth classes but got little response and instead she would look away in embarrassment. My biggest concern came when I learned she had had very little to eat and no water all day (only a few bites of chicken with coca cola to drink). I suspect that perhaps this was her typical modus operandi. I have seen great looking babies come out of a few mamas who survived on cereal, twinkies and sodas, but more often I have seen labors with true failure to progress, terrible tears of the perineum from tissues in poor condition (because of the malnutrition factor), and obvious (though often not tested) hypoglycemia when the pushing stage was meant to begin which ends in maternal exhaustion and a stalled labor in the eleventh hour. I also suspect a correlation to mothers that vomit during transition to hypoglycemia because the whole thing looks so familiar to this midwife who has struggled with hypoglycemia since my adolescence.  I was told not to eat anything as soon as I knew I was in labor. I know that the basic fear many women have when approaching childbirth, and the very nature of birth, that some women do not experience a lot of natural hunger and so are not inclined to eat much if at all in early labor. This can especially become a problem when you think about the fact that early labor can last for a couple of days! The whole world seems indoctrinated to the fact that the medical model teaches that the “entire digestive system shuts down during labor” (yeah right!!! ask any other mom of 7 what she thinks about that!) and so it has become a sort of accepted “understanding” that you shouldn’t eat when in labor “just in case you need a cesarean”. The sad fact of the matter is that failure to progress and maternal exhaustion can be the very thing that leads to the need for a cesarean! Oh it is such a frustrating cycle that I have seen repeated over and over again. I had like a snap shot picture in my head of how this particular poor girl’s labor could end, although I did my best to convince her to eat throughout the day to try to change what I could see coming. Alas, she turned her head aside at every plate of food brought to her and we only managed to get a few bites of plain white rice down her. The night ended in the wee hours with us practically carrying the poor girl out and a sad quick ride to the hospital with her gentle moans haunting my “primary under supervision’s” heart all the way there. I thought the poor child would slide right out of the wheelchair when she was wheeled in and oh how I wanted to gather her up and make it all better. We were not allowed to accompany her into the hospital. Today I am sad and unsettled as I wonder about her fate. The hospital care here can be horrendous with two women and their babies to one twin bed, no sheets, no pillow and other such unimaginable treatment. Babies under observation are often put (unwashed) several to an isolette (making that particular word rather nil and void wouldn’t you say?). On days such as this, I feel the word “unfinished” to be a better adjective of my person (and in this case the work set before me) than the aforementioned “becoming”. At present the forward process feels forced with very little ground gained with each gargantuan effort. I suppose this is a normal part of the process so I will try to check my attitude and give thanks for every hard lesson learned.

On other news, there was a toddler in TLC who was born with a cleft palate and double cleft lip. He always looks at me with his great big eyes and runs towards me and then hesitantly stops and gives a little half wave as if not sure about how I will receive him. I am so pleased to say that he finally got to have his second surgery, though he is looking a bit weary worn with his little face bandaged and bruised. Still he has enough orneriness to be giving the worker caring for him a run for her money most of the time. I was glad that the first time I saw him he wasn’t looking at me, just in case any “shadow of turning” may have appeared on my face (a fact I am embarrassed to admit… why are humans so enamored with the perfection of features? I am gonna ask God about that when I get to heaven!) I always greet him with a full open face wreathed in the brightest of smiles and am rewarded with an instant relaxing of the tiny little signs of anxiety he carries around his eyes. I have heard that they are making decisions in his adoption. I pray that his new “forever family” will be blessed by this sweet sensitive boy. What a gift he is for sure!

Day 36
Fingerprints All Over My Heart
I had such sweet times today. Started the "day" at around 1:30 am with a gorgeous baby girl who arrived exactly 4 minutes after I walked in the door. Literally caught her with one glove on about halfway. But she was safe and sound which is what really matters. The placenta was just as speedy and we had mama up in the bed in no time and the little darling latched right on and contentedly stayed there for the first hour plus. Then later when it was time to do the newborn exam I got to play one of my favorite roles... instructor to some Philipina nursing/midwifery students. Got one of them right in the middle of the fray and she was thrilled to get to bathe the baby herself. Then I took a little time to have a couple of conversations with some of the people who look after me. One of them is Helen and the other Beth (ironic that those are my own mother's and mother-in-law's names!). They are kind of my "mama's" here (although age wise I am not sure there is a real correspondence!), and felt good to tell them how much I appreciated them. I had some good times sitting on the porch and laughing with the midwives about things too. Sweet times. Today I want to complete my tribute to the beautiful Beth by sharing her picture (you have already seen the stunning Helen as she is Mai Mai's mama) as requested by my daughter Crystaline. Here she is folks... lovely, lovely woman! Thanks Rachel Hodges Jamison... stole your picture!

I love this song by Winnona Judd and so dedicate it to the lovely women here that dedicate their lives to helping others. They are Deborah Gustafson, Jeri Gunderson, Sara Gunderson, Dina Castro, Florabel Correa, Lydia Oliveros, Lornie Bagro, Grace Villamor, Helen Cervantes, and Beth Beatrice. You all inspire me to the depths of my soul to be a better woman, because you all love so deeply! I am so enjoying basking in the beauty of each and every one of you! All my love my dearlings....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHYWYxWOCQw