They come in. They go out.

Saw a really cute baby on ultrasound. Little belly pushed out, chin tucked just so. Sweet baby hand rubbing it's eye as we took a peek inside it's world for just a moment. Parents already falling so deeply in love...

I had to swallow the lump in my throat. For across town in another house a mother mourns the deepest of deep sadness as she says goodbye to her baby, just days short of the one year birthday.

They come in.

They go out.

I stood a long time and stared at the sliver of a moon tonight. So many questions I don't have answers to. I don't have to know right now. It just is. What is, simply is. We re-evaluate life in times like these. With a shake of guilt we squeeze ours a little tighter. We think about what is or isn't at the end of this journey. We hope. We cling to what we know. We pray to what is.

Again I am brought to that place of awe. I am reminded of the door I can feel open at every birth. They come in. They go out. It's just a door that holds the in between. A door that opens with elemental forces of energy beyond our control. Most the time a Midwife stands on the side of those coming in.

But sometimes not.

She still stands.

She continues to hold space as a guardian of these sacred moments.

While I am not yet a grown Midwife, and I certainly wasn't present for this baby going out, I light a candle tonight, I hold space in love and light and whispered prayers for the soul going home. May the journey be swift. May there be arms to hold you at the other end. I am certain the moments spent here, on this side will always be held  most precious by those that had the honor of holding you for just a while.

Gods speed little one.

11/20/2011

What a neat birthday.

As I drove at 5am this morning down the rainy dark freeway, I, once again, invited my higher power to attend my day. I had many reasons. This would be the first birth that required me to wear my big girl shoes and get a taste of what it's like to be a real midwife in the real world. It would also be my last signed off assisted birth. That's not to say I'm wearing my big girl shoes full time now, nor is it to say I'll never be the assistant again...but it is to say this birth, no matter the end result, was steeped with significance, for me. And, it's a really cool birthday!

I knew no matter what to first find my center. Find that calm presence. I've spent many days unable to center, unable to ground, unable to just. hold.space. My brain runs overtime reviewing vast amounts of material I have studied, rules, guidelines, protocols, standards of practice. I'm a thinker. But, I know that unless I stop and center my energy, all that knowledge means squat.

I managed to center. In fact, I felt a really calm peace over me as I pulled up to the house. Everything went as well as birth can go, and I got to catch the baby with my preceptor standing nearby. My excitement is truly trifold: I finished my assists. My preceptor was amazing in how her teaching was able to shift to the next level. And...Hello!!! I JUST CAUGHT A BABY!

I'm so happy to be moving forward. You'll have to forgive me as I find my way to blog while maintaining my ethics. I cannot and do not want to share any personal information about a client. It's a very fine line, and our community is small. I cannot talk about anything even remotely personal such as gender, baby weight or any details about a birth, which makes it hard to really blog emotions and give you insight as to what it's like to walk in my shoes. I can only say for today...that it was amazing and I am so full of gratitude and joy!

What I carry with me to a birth.

It was 5am. I was tired. Reviewing the events of the night, the beauty of the mama-baby connection, the experience of simply being at a birth, let alone participating at all. My eyes were tired. The freeway was completely clear of cars, just three lanes straight ahead of me and up a hill. It was like I could drive right up into heaven in my little blue van and say hello. I was chatting with my Creator. Something I often do when I find myself in my empty van, lacking in voices of my little people, just me and the quietness. We meet in times like that you know. Have a little heart to heart.
The sky turned pink. The sun was slowly rising. I thought of my family at home all tucked into bed, soon to be up and about to start their day. I thought of years into the future doing this same drive for a different family, in a different van maybe, in a different situation, maybe no kids left at home tucked into their beds. I don't ever want to lose that feeling. That quiet moment having a heart to heart, full of gratitude and amazement. I don't ever want to outgrow that. I don't ever want to live in fear. I don't ever want to drive home thinking "thank God that worked out okay."

I am not so naive to think that things don't happen at birth for I am a walking example of someone who had "things" happen at her birth. Ollie was a great example of the unexpected and why we learn the life saving skills that we do as Midwives-as student Midwives. It's been brought up more than once lately-Ollie's birth-and what I carry with me from his birth. And it's true, I do carry Ollie's birth with me. I carry his pictures in my purse. But I don't think that it's understood exactly what I carry with me and so I thought it would be a good blog post.

Allow me to elaborate: After the ambulance had come, the men in blue had scooped up my baby boy and carried him in their arms away from me for the sake of his life, my own ambulance came, my own men in blue to get me onto a gurney and into my own ride to the hospital. As we neared the front door, my mom was standing there waiting to hug me, or say something or just watch me go. She felt helpless. She was wringing her hands, her face was swollen from tears and fear...I looked at her straight in the eyes. They paused for a moment so we could speak. I grabbed her hand and we both welled up with tears. Our eyes locked and I felt her feelings, she felt mine, vast emotions passed between us in those moments without a spoken word.  And of all the millions of things I could have said at that intense moment I looked at her and said "we. did. everything. right." She nodded and took a deep breath of reassurance and forward we moved on our journey. It's all we had. We didn't have any answers. For all I knew I would arrive to the hospital to a Doc in a white coat holding a clipboard preparing to see my dead baby that they couldn't save. There was nothing else but to look at what we had done and judge it for what it was. And in those moments, everything else is set aside and the truth comes forth. We had done everything right.

I still hold true to that today, I carry those words in my heart. We did do everything right. And thus to me is the purpose of midwifery care. It is doing everything right to the best we know and have and understand. And everything right is so much more than the fact that we immediately gave Ollie rescue breathing, and called 9-1-1, transferred care, did all the emergency protocols that are so important to have in place. But we did every thing right. We grew him in the healthiest pregnancy we knew to create, we planned a home birth, we researched the hell out of pregnancy choices and outcomes, we hired licensed Midwives to watch over us, we bonded with our unborn baby, and we birthed him in the most optimal environment we knew how.

There is so much room for different styles of care and interpretation of "everything right"-hands on, hands off, every little movement that any person makes could be critiqued, but the bottom line is that child was given the best that we knew to give him at that point, and that's all one can give...the best they have-the best skills, the best understanding, the best care, the best experience, the best love. That's what I carry with me every day. That is what Ollie gave to me to hold forever. That is what I strive to improve; each relationship, each skill, each understanding, each moment. I don't live in FEAR everyday wondering if I did my best. I know I do. I give it all, 100% every day, because THAT is what's right.

And ultimately I feel like we continued to do everything right. Consenting to what we had to and what was needed but saying no to other things in the hospital, pushing our limits so we could bring him home sooner, camping out in the hospital parking lot so we could bond and grow closer and get home sooner...all the while processing and integrating by blog, by midwifery care, by family, by prayer. Getting through it all as it unfolded and storing nothing to be processed later. Doing what everyone always says to do...feeling it and walking it at the same time.

You see, Ollie's story doesn't scare me. It inspires me. It's one of the reasons I believe so strongly in midwifery care and so much in the safety of home birth. Beyond the home birth, the care that I received as his mother, allowing me to integrate and process each step of the way gave me an "in the moment" healing. It was like having a therapist walk me through that time of my life as it was happening. I didn't and don't need to hold on to feelings of trauma. I don't need therapy now. I don't need a prescription for anti-anxiety pills because I walk around holding the shadows of hell that haunt me from a horrid experience.

I am grateful for Ollie's birth and the lessons it taught me-which are not about fear. It's all about faith and trust and I am proud and happy to carry it with me every single day. I don't ever want to not carry that with me. It is the essence of what I believe and what I do.