The nature of the path to becoming a certified professional midwife is not an easy flat straight course. My recent ups and downs have brought me to the depths of my courage and faith. This meme represents exactly what I have been using to move ahead in the past few days.
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The desire to complete my clinical requirements has been a source of great worry of late. Challenges occur much more than triumphs right now. As I listened to my motivation playlist this morning I was brought to the depth of relief from the worry about how or when I will be finished. This hymn is the cry of my heart today and brought me such peace to sing aloud. I am fully and completely committed to the journey I am on, I need reminders often the I was led here and I know my passion of Divine origin.
You may have read on my Home page that I dream of the day that my descendants learn of my work. I hope to make them proud. Last August I participated in a "Transitioning and Visioning Gathering" with other students in their final year at MCU. As it turns out this will not come to pass for me as it will take me more than that to complete my clinical requirements to graduate. I guess you my say my senior year will take more like 18 months but that is beside the point. In the session we were to write the description of our future practice to use as a vision of what we are building. I wrote mine in the voice of a granddaughter sharing her report about me to classmates in school. Here is the vision I am working toward: Nana is a midwife. A midwife helps mothers to give birth to their babies. Sometimes I get to go and visit Nana in her office. She checks on the health of the mother and baby at least every month. Her favorite tool is her Pinard horn. By placing it on the mother's belly and her ear on the other side she can hear the baby's heart beating. When it is time for the baby to be born the mother arrives at her birth center early so she can be very comfortable while she works to give birth to her baby. A monitrice attends the mother. She is trained to massage the mother, help her to stay peaceful and checks on the the mother and her baby until it is time for Nana to arrive. When Nana and her students arrive the mother is almost ready to have her baby. The room the mother gives birth in has been chosen by the mother and decorated with her vision board, prayer flags or birth altar if she chooses. Nana and her students guard the birth space as a sacred place only entering to monitor the mother and baby as needed. The lights are kept low and voices are soft to maintain the reverence for the laboring mother. Sometimes as morning breaks the baby arrives straight into his mother's waiting hands. His father holds his mother as he kisses her forehead they embrace in joy and weep softly as tears of gratitude softly fall on Nana's cheeks. This is her favorite moment of birth. After the placenta is delivered the mother is tucked into the warm bed where the new family snuggles. The monitrice says her goodbyes as Nana and her students step out to call the postpartum doula to the birth center. She is the first of three who will attend the mother for the first day. The mother and baby are examined in the birth suite after they have had their golden hour. The doula arrives and brings in the first serving of the meals prepared to warm and nourish the mother. The family has their first meal together as Nana checks on her and baby periodically for the first couple of hours. Afterward she will be in the capable hands of the doula. As Nana and her students say their goodbyes to the family the doula takes over care, feeding the family, coaching the mother about baby care and breastfeeding, preparing the placenta and cleaning the birth center. Nana goes home to rest soundly because her sister midwives will take care of her appointments and any births for the next 24 hours while she gets some much needed sleep. I love to watch Nana work and hear about the new babies. Maybe someday I will be a midwife. I know when I have a baby Nana will be there to help me. I'm sure there will be changes to this vision but it is beautiful for me to think of a practice like this someday. I wanted it to be recorded here. Have you recorded what your dream practice will look like? It is a lovely way to focus when days are long and nights are longer with assignments and projects crowding the real joys of clinical work. I hope you will enjoy my vision. Lately I've continued to see the priceless lessons of life as preparing me to be a midwife. They have also given me a greater perspective on the values I hold dear. Time is a undervalued teacher. When I began my midwifery journey I thought the goal needed to be defined by a time limit. Time limits, deadlines or due dates can create a sense of urgency when the sun rises or the sun sets on another day and you feel no closer to the end. When reflecting backward in time however over a period of months or in my case years you can see a much longer preparation that has been taking place to prepare for the achievement you desperately desire.
I think this is one of the advantages of becoming a midwife at my age, time. I have, in some ways, more time, even though I have less. I am fond of the book "Goddesses Never Age" by Christiane Northrup, M.D. I appreciate her wisdom, "It is your beliefs—and the behavior that stems from those beliefs—that largely determines your experience of moving through time." I am learning that the movement through time is much more enjoyable when we are not rushing to the next destination, goal, or dream. When life give you lemons, make lemonade, the old adage goes, but, sometimes, you need to taste the bitter so you can know the sweet; or make lemon merengue pie; or savor the scent of the fresh lemon peel. Whatever you need to do with the lessons life is handing you, roll with it, you will find your learning journey is much more enjoyable this way.
Last night as I sat down at my computer exhausted from a long drive after clinic I watched my motivational videos and listened to the music and the song from the "Rule Yourself" Michael Phelps ad was on my mind. I searched for the original music and found it on YouTube. It is an appropriate message for my evening yesterday. I feel like the extensions to complete the Genetics class has been like a long overdue goodbye to a bad lover (not that I'd actually know what that feels like). I need to say this last goodbye! I will finish this, the last course at MCU. This is my last goodbye!!!
What if your fairy godmother is the wisest, smartest, version of yourself whispering from the future? Blissiimo asked this very question using the photo below to create a meme that went viral in my circles and touched me to the quick. I have thought that someday I'd like to write my younger-self a letter to share the wisdom of this passage of time. I have also thought of the things I might hope to hear from my elder-self, the practicing midwife who is successfully balancing time with family and a midwifery practice that is the fulfillment of all of my dreams. I want to meet my future-self in the here and now and ask her so many questions. I want her to be ultra-authentically me. I envision myself as confident as Helen Mirren seems to be in the photograph below. She is quoted as saying "I realised that I did not want to know what the future held. I wanted my life to be an adventure. Whatever pleasure or pains, successes or failures, disasters or triumphs were waiting for me, I wanted them to come as a surprise." I want to be like that, hopeful, unattached to the outcome, and excited about the future. I'm getting there.
I participated this morning in a live session presented by MCU on the subject of copyright. I was familiar enough with the subject to know that my use of images, etcetera for my homework would be fair use of the copyrighted materials I included, however, now that the work I created on the assignments is being included in my ePortfolio I must make thousands of changes. What a headache! One piece of advice for future students. Follow copyright guidelines as if you intend to publish your work. You may someday want to use the pages (or be required to by a future assignment) for public consumption. I had always intended to use my handouts in my future practice I just never realized how much work it would become after all the work I have done over the past six years in school.
A couple of weeks back I posted a question to our Midwives College of Utah Student Support Facebook Group. "I have a brilliant idea! Postpartum support for birth workers. After a grueling 24+ hours of support I want a postpartum doula to bring me food, draw me a bath, clean my house and give me a massage. What should the job title be? I am manifesting this for my future practice!!!" I was not posting in jest. I truly feel the need for someone in my life whose only job is to care for me. You see, I am terrible at self-care. Last year a fellow student midwife, Mary Burgess (Mary has graduated and is a practicing midwife in Bellingham Washington, click on her name for a link to her practice), presented at Clinical Rounds, "Holistic Check-In, for Midwives" (and students of midwifery). The presentation and her research was based on work by Elizabeth Davis in her book "Heart and Hands: A midwife’s guide to pregnancy and birth" (5th Ed., 2012). On pages 66 and 67 Ms. Davis includes “For Parents: Self-Care in Pregnancy” a self-questionnaire that the mother can use to rate herself on a scale of 1-4 to see how she is doing in prenatal self-care. Mary developed a "Holistic Check-In Questionnaire for Midwives & Students of Midwifery." With her permission I share this self-questionnaire below. When I participated in Mary's presentation I had an aHa moment. I need this much more in my life. Test yourself to see how well you are doing on self-care. I recommend the presentation if you are a student at MCU. It can be found on the MCU student portal in the Digital Library> Clinical Rounds> Holistic Check-In for Midwives. |
Why MusingsThe page I have called Musings is a blog of sorts. I invite you to read my Home page to learn the reasons I had for creating this ePortfolio and how it all started. In it you will find that this ePortfolio began as a learning tool for future students at the Midwives College of Utah. The ePortfolio will become a requirement beginning in the Fall 2016 semester. I also recommend it for former students still finishing their studies and looking for a way to develop their future practice's website, share with potential clients or potential preceptors, and as a very in depth resume of sorts. I invite you to read my musings during the creation of this ePortfolio in the hope that it may strengthen your devotion to your studies, build your determination to answer your call, and be encouraged by the sharing of my musings as I complete this task. Archives
October 2016
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