Bienbenido bebe

The hazy blue of this poor quality cell phone photo represents the day. This message was scribbled on the white board by the 21 year old husband of the 17 year old girl who was in labor when they first came in. She, then, was dressed, walking slowly, but barley breathing heavily.

Over the course of the next 4 hrs, she transformed from a young Mexican, looking girlish in jeans and a sweater, with gorgeous long black shiny hair in a braid swinging behind her, to a powerful woman - pushing out a baby with a grunt and a moan with no pitocin, no pain meds, clutching the arms of her husband on one side and her cousin on the other, and me at her perineum, grinning behind my plastic mask. In the interim, she learned to be intimate with strangers, to try rolling on the birthing ball, and to listen to and trust her body.

The baby, Shanelle (pronounced like the perfume), came out spinning, with her fist raised up and held high, yelling her way into this big beautiful world. I did nothing more graceful than just hold on and slip the slippery wet cord around her slippery wet head and - oops - that hand. We laid her on her mama's belly and reveled in her wales.

Who knows what her life will grow into, if she will have her first baby at 15 like her strong mama, or if she will be the first in her family to speak English, go to college, and keep her fist raised high in the fight for immigrant rights, for human rights, and for being fully human.

Life is precious indeed.

babe in toy land!

I caught my first kid today..... she was slip sliding right out of her 21 year old mom. It was stressful - I did not cry, but instead sweat up the inside of my gown and fogged up my shield mask so I could barely see. It's the little things.

She came in at 7am for an induction (induction: beginning labor with medication, not time...). The bag of pitocin was hung at 8am. By 10:58 she had a broken bag of water, and by 11:19am a screaming baby and a sweating nurse midwifery student staring at her perineum with wide eyes.

We sewed her back up a bit, the other student did breastfeeding counseling while I filled out paper after paper after paper. It was a great event. At 5pm the midwife and I went upstairs to visit her. She was sitting in bed, surrounded by family and friends, breastfeeding like a champ.

It warms a fledgling midwife's heart. I feel inducted into this tribe. I have caught my first baby. It was not magical, but very very real. Very stretchy. Very stressful. Very wet and messy and beautiful.

No babes in toy land

Although I awoke each hour almost on the hour last night to check my phone for a dreaded missed call, there was none. No call. No labors. No births. No snowy adventures. Perhaps next time.

Ring ring

I have my first overnight call shift right now. And it's snowing. And my car was stolen this week. So I'm experiencing a moment of self pity.

This is our third week of clinical - and thus far, I haven't used my fingers as measuring tapes once. Nor have I seen a little head crowning. Nor have I helped guide a screaming, milky newborn into this snowy world.

So, as I sit at my desk to study, with fingers un-decidedly crossed, I await my first birth. I am trepidatous about the snow, my car-less situation, and how this whole thing will unfold. The thing about normal, natural birth is that it doesn't go by my clock. Silly birth.

I'll keep you all posted.

Before it was Varanasi

It was Banares. This photo was taken circa 1982. Can you spot me?

My mom found this photo recently and shared it. She suggested we put it to music.... "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is not quite the same."

Cheers to adventures, bicycles, and chupples.