Last push for the year...

Three more weeks till school is done and my freshwoman days end. One last Freshwoman onsite (4 days) next week, then a marathon 6 day Breastfeeding Educator Course, then a sprinkling of finals. Including a mammoth and frankly terrifying Midwifery Care 3 exam which will encompass Rh isoimmunization, hypertension/pre-eclampsia/HELLP, preterm labor, cervical insufficency (NOT incompetancy) and trauma in late pregnancy. Erm. Fuuuuck. (head on desk wearily).

Ubernanny departs on Friday. Am only marginally freaked. Perhaps too tired, perhaps just sure that somehow this will all play out as it should.

******

An hour in therapy this afternoon. Starting again. This path can be gnarly. It's ironic to me that the counseling class is what put me back in counseling. I veritably spewed *stuff* for an hour. I was actually surprised at how much I had to unload. When my therapist called time, I was taken aback. As usual, like all therapy, to be continued. First thing which bubbled to the surface though is that I am almost sure now though that my deep abiding mistrust and antagonism of OB/medical folks springs in large part from Eldest's birth. Duh.

It oddly makes little difference (yet) that my second hospital birth was delightful. I have to figure out how to set down that first experience, that massively fucked up day and the fucked up days that followed, so that I can stand in a room with an obstetrician and not feel like I am a warrior tensed for battle, to not feel like I must defend the integrity of both myself (professionally) and my client (physically). I need to figure that out so I can work with those folks. Academically I understand that I want (and need) to be able to work alongside beautifully with but who, on a gut level I am still really, personally afraid of. I'm contemplating going and talking with Penny Simkin about it. I'm not a crazy woman. Really. I'm looking for a path around this obstacle (through it?). I don't want to be a crazy, angry midwife who hates doctors. I don't hate doctors. I hate the routine which has led to so many birth abused women and babies (myself among them)...Therein I think lies a large piece of me electing to deliberately step outside that system. But I know that I must be able to work alongside and perhaps at some point within it, and so instinctively I know I have to deal with the hurt done to me. Perhaps some forgiveness is in order. Forgiving that sort of hurt though is a tall order.

I wonder if they (the OB's and L&D nurses of the world) realize the scale of the damage that a shitty birth experience can do. Check out the paternalistic, condecending comment I got from a visitor about "birthing experiences" the other day... I know that midwives are sometimes also responsible for these too but I do think that the fundamental difference lies in what I percieve as the willingness of the midwifery profession to acknowledge and examine critically those experiences to try to ensure that they are few. Perhaps I'm being simplistic. Midwives screw up too, and perhaps it's just because there are so few of us that it's easier to be holier-than-thou. I do think though that the Midwives Model of Care teaches and reinforces the notion that the experience of childbearing is formative and has profound psychological impact for women. I wonder if the the system of medical training doesn't reduce all those women over the course of hospital internship and residency to a blur of prenatal tests and bellies and perineums? I'm quite sure that the intern who triaged me in Chicago has no idea who I was or the extent of the damage he did me. He certainly didn't reply (and I was quite certain he worldn't) to the letter I sent him a few months ago (incidentally he didn't go on to OB/GYN - thank the Goddess). And I'm not sure that the OB/GYN who delivered my son remembers any of the cumulative 7 or 8 hours (I'm being generous) she spent with me over the course of my pregnancy AND (27hr) birth AND postpartum five years ago.*

That's a fucking travesty.

It seems massively unfair that the experiences I suffered at their hands (and on her watch) didn't warrant a second thought, or linger in their memories.

And yet somehow, to become a good midwife, I must lay this burden down.

Food for therapy.

*In comparison, my Midwife spends between 12 and 15hrs with a client prenatally in visits, and then several more on the phone, and then whatever time during the births - between 4 and 12hrs (being conservative on the high end there) and then another 6 or so hours postnatally.