Growing into a midwife

 June 19th!  In the wee hours of the morning I caught my first baby as a primary student, AND it was a continuity of care.

 Man oh man, I am mad at myself.  I was running a birth and I froze.  My preceptor asked the client if they wanted counter-pressure and I looked down and didn't see any sort of opening, so I was hesitant.  The next contraction the baby came flying out!  I hesitated enough that I missed the catch :(  Lesson learned, your preceptor was prompting you idiot!!!  Take it!

 Ahh, I am terrible at keeping up obviously. I am phase three, but no phase three births yes, however plenty of phase 3 prenatals and a good deal of initials.  Yay!

 This was my first time working with C. First birth after my elbow surgery. FTM. ROM over 24 hours upon arrival.  Arrived at 4pm. Mom was in a nice active pattern. In hindsight she was probably 4-5 centimeters. I felt like I had to get my footing at first. I over analyzed answers from C. We found a groove though I was unsure how active of a role she wanted me in. Turns out she did offer me to be in a phase 3 role with the ability to ask for help. I think I did ok with my limited phase three assist exposure. I am really analyzing why I have not pushed for more phase three roles. I think because we had a phase three student that was nearly done but is that really it? Baby had a high baseline change around 6?  C asked me what to do. I immediately thought. Drink More and add electrolytes. When that worked I was internally overjoyed as it means I am learning to apply what I learn in school. Baby had a late decel. Position change. Baby was a bit finicky at times based on mom's ...

Establishing boundaries Amy  Amy first texts on Thursday at 9 pm. She reports "very strong" contractions that are happening about every 3-9 minutes and lasting from 30 seconds - 2 minutes long. She texts again at 1 am saying contractions are even stronger now and happening about every 5 minutes and lasting 45 seconds long. She calls on Friday morning at 6 am reporting contractions every 5 minutes and 50-60 seconds long. You arrive at Amy's on Friday at 7 am Her BP is 130/80, pulse 90, temp 98.6 FHTs are in the 130s-140s before, during, and after a contraction Leopold's ROP SVE: 2 cm/100%/0 Struggling with contractions, needs lots of labor support       My first thought about this prompt was Amy is 18.  This flags me and makes me take notice of the fact that they have probably been infantilized as a pregnant teenager, and I need to be aware of the language used in conversation with them (Fleming et al., ...

This birth was a beautiful butter birth, the name comes from being smooth like butter.  We got there shortly after the clients water broke.  The baby was born within the hour of arrival.   This was a birth where the placenta took a bit to release and the first time that I learned about trailing membranes in the home birth setting.  I have heard of it in the hospital setting. This particular placenta left some trailing membranes.  I did not know that there was a higher risk of bleeding so pitocin was offered by the lead midwife.  It was declined and watch and see plan was created.  I became curious about trailing membranes, so here I am learning as much as I can. Varney's has very little info on trailing membranes, it basically says that there has been no evidence to support that trailing membranes cause more bleeding (King et al., 2018).  This is the only info I could really find.  I searched OVID and Google Scholar and then gave in to p...