School Days
Today was a good day at school. Everything seems to be settling down a bit, everyone getting into the rhythm of the way the program operates. Personalities initially so great, and then irritating as hell are mellowing and now just are. Today I heard the stories of women who planned out of hospital births but transfered to complete their births in the hospital - one for pain relief and another for failure to progress - and both, pleasingly, were very satisfied with their births after everything turned out so differently from their ideal.
Then we met M. M is a practicing midwife in the Seattle area and she's just so wonderful. Strong and vocal and smart and wise. I'm not sure why but I tend to think of the midwives I meet as either "my sort of midwife" (i.e. I'd have her for my birth), or not. It was the first time I heard a midwife admonish us in quite this way to assert ourselves as legitimate healthcare professionals, to defend our role as experts in normal birth and yes, to even insist that in that arena, the arena of normal that we (or the midwives we will become) know more than obstetricians. It was radical and awesome and I so needed to hear shouted out (she didn't shout really but that was how it felt) what I had heard whispered in my heart for a while now. It was an encounter which did my soul good.
This week I also performed - and received- my first vagino-rectal exam. Kinda funny when you consider my reaction to reading of this practice when I got my text books for the first time... But yes, occasionally a rectal exam is indicated, usually to assess the integrity of the wall which separates the vagina from the rectum, but also because a rectal exam allows you to reach 5cm further into the pelvis than a vaginal exam will - in theory, anyway - I'm not sure that I'll ever need or want to get that far inside a woman's rectum. As you may have expected this first try, like our first pelvics met with no small amount of apprehension, and like the pelvics wound up being no big deal. Gooey, yes, because everyone was intent on accommodating their practice partner with copious quantities of lube... but otherwise no biggie. Just another level of intimate knowledge of my classmates and another check mark in the box of my Well Woman Assessment class. Have I mentioned I plan on ace-ing that exam?
There is now NOTHING that I cannot talk to these women about. Nothing at all. Funny how that happens.
Oh, and I got 96% on my epidemiology midterm. Nice.
Then we met M. M is a practicing midwife in the Seattle area and she's just so wonderful. Strong and vocal and smart and wise. I'm not sure why but I tend to think of the midwives I meet as either "my sort of midwife" (i.e. I'd have her for my birth), or not. It was the first time I heard a midwife admonish us in quite this way to assert ourselves as legitimate healthcare professionals, to defend our role as experts in normal birth and yes, to even insist that in that arena, the arena of normal that we (or the midwives we will become) know more than obstetricians. It was radical and awesome and I so needed to hear shouted out (she didn't shout really but that was how it felt) what I had heard whispered in my heart for a while now. It was an encounter which did my soul good.
This week I also performed - and received- my first vagino-rectal exam. Kinda funny when you consider my reaction to reading of this practice when I got my text books for the first time... But yes, occasionally a rectal exam is indicated, usually to assess the integrity of the wall which separates the vagina from the rectum, but also because a rectal exam allows you to reach 5cm further into the pelvis than a vaginal exam will - in theory, anyway - I'm not sure that I'll ever need or want to get that far inside a woman's rectum. As you may have expected this first try, like our first pelvics met with no small amount of apprehension, and like the pelvics wound up being no big deal. Gooey, yes, because everyone was intent on accommodating their practice partner with copious quantities of lube... but otherwise no biggie. Just another level of intimate knowledge of my classmates and another check mark in the box of my Well Woman Assessment class. Have I mentioned I plan on ace-ing that exam?
There is now NOTHING that I cannot talk to these women about. Nothing at all. Funny how that happens.
Oh, and I got 96% on my epidemiology midterm. Nice.
posted by Louisa at 11:48 PM
1 Comments:
Congrats on the exam score!
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