Live your life.

"Live your life" is the advice given to me by a much-admired instructor midwife at school. This was in reference to the energy which builds while you are on call. Clothes kept washed, snacks set aside, grocery shopping delayed a day or two (or a week or two) 'till client has birthed and there might be a gap until the next one. It's taken me a while to learn to shut my mind off, to quit thinking about who might "go" next. Stop planning my activities around potential interruption. I still lay out clothes for the next birth before I go to sleep at night and my phone is plugged into it's charger next to my bed, but it's easier now to go to sleep without fretting about how much sleep lies ahead. The unpredictability of my life is becoming oddly predictable.

So today as I wait for two more mothers to labor I rose well rested after sleeping the sleep of the emotionally exhausted. I grated a zucchini from my garden and welcomed my friends and their children to my lawn. We snacked and chatted and enjoyed the new babies among us, Emma (3.5 wks, born unassisted to my friend and senior student midwife) and little Viola (6 wks born to my friend and doula client). I played with my youngest and enjoyed his latest words: "you're welcome". I fed him his favorite macaroni and cheese for lunch.

This afternoon I will wash my sheets and hang them on the line in the sun to dry, I will sleep next to my son as he naps and then make my family the first meal I've made them in a couple of weeks. I plan on knitting mindlessly for an hour and taking a long shower. Tonight I will venture out to the local pub with two dear doula friends and I might debrief a bit about yesterday's sadness. I might enjoy a small margarita. Just one. I will definitely eat dessert.

My phone might ring and I may be paged to a birth. But I might not.

And in the interim I will live my life.