Growing into a midwife

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...

    Illustration by (Forsythe, 2012) Today I am going to reflect on reflective journaling; that sounds pretty funny.  Hopefully, this is the only time this journal feels like an assignment.  I am a journaler by nature.  I haven't been as diligent about it in the past four years, but while my kiddos were little, I journaled a lot. I love looking back and seeing how my thought processes have changed, how I have matured, what I was so concerned about, and how most of it turned out alright in the end.  Writing in a journal in the past has made me feel more connected to my world.  Often, the journals I did in Germany were also shared with friends and family back home.  It helped those far away keep up with what was going on in our lives.  I also was able to keep some of those private so that I could get my thoughts down.  These were good for those early marriage skirmishes that were no one else's business.  The type ...