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Welcome UC midwifery students!
Midwifery is truly a personal journey. Please share your thoughts and reflections on what this journey means to you at this point in your process. Use this space to share all things midwifery! We can all learn from each other.
Deb
7 comments:
It is so good to be entering this phase of school! On my venture through this course of study, I have realized that childbirth is so different than what it is portrayed to be in the hospital setting. Over our break I read some really good books about midwifery. In case you would like to read them they are:
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth
Spiritual Midwifery
Motherwit
I agree Lisa- finally being "hands-on" has reaffirmed by decision to enter this field. I can't wait to be done! I would also recommend "Baby Catcher" by Peggy Vincent.
I agree, Peggy Vincent's "Baby Catcher" is a great read. Moving forward to the "hands on" also is very exciting and scary.
Out of all the exeriences I have had nothing has been more difficult and yet more rewarding than entering graduate school and working on nurse midwifery. I have changed my entire thinking on the process of birth and the medical model in relation to birth. I have seen such changes in obstetrics I was on the technological band wagon for so long, that I didn't even know what normal was any longer. I now know that when ever we put in place some type of intervention we risk abnormal outcomes for our patients and that thought ways heavy on my mind. I worry now when and if an intervention is too soon, not soon enough, needed, not needed and so on....It makes my head spin to keep it all straight. I guess the important thing is that I no longer think strictly in the mind set of a medical model and an interventionist. I trust that a women's body does what it is suppossed to do the majority of the time and second guessing interventions keeps a healthy perspective on what is right, needed and desired for my patient.
Good to see you all sharing. Another good read is A Midwife's Story by Penny Armstrong. Follows Penny's personal journey through attending births in Lancaster county Pennsylvania among the Amish community there. It was one of the first books I read about midwifery that really spoke to the committment and selflessness that is both the blessing and the challenge of midwifery. Enjoy.
Karen G hit on a critical thought...the personal transformation that takes place when you begin to think about birth in a different way. It is truly a powerful experience! You will hear my mantra thorugh your educational experience..."trust the process" It is a well designed process and it works best when we respect it and work WITH it to facilitate NOT to direct or control it. I am looking forward to the discussion as you move through this experience.
Deb
Trying to do it all
I just need to know that I am not the only one out there trying to work 32 hours a week, and do school too. It is so overwhelming when I think about what is due, my time constraints, travel time to my clinical site 3 hours away and so on....ARGHHH. All I know is I am so content when I am at my clinical and working with women and catchin' babies. I also know that I feel like I am wasting time when I am working at the (ok excuse the pun for the psych hosp) but the nut house. I KNOW that working long term in psych is not for me, but I have learned a great deal and know I will put it to good use. I have learned not only psych diagnosis's but the actions and behaviors of chemical dependence, addiction, adolescent defiance disorder, autism, ahberger's and most of all post partum depression and psychosis.
I JUST want to BE DONE with this place and wish I had a sugar daddy so I didn't have to work and go to school...yeah right! :)
I hope everyone else is doing great. I know that those psych techs that are pregnant come to me and ask questions, so do the psychiatrists I work with...go figure!
If anyone hasn't see the Business of being born it is a must see film....AMAZING!!!! I think it should be required for this school. You can get it on netflix.
Karen
Karen- hang in there girl! Eye on the prize... This process is a lot like childbirth, long and painful but totally worth the end result. And you are right about The Business of Being Born- we showed that movie at our last AWHONN meeting, and we had Ricky Lake's doula from the movie present for a discussion panal afterwards- very inspiring!!
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