Busy and Waiting

I've been having a wonderful time lately being a midwife. And I've been having a wonderful time lately being a person. I guess for me the two just mesh. I'm very thankful that I have a calling that fits who I am. I know that to do what you love is a gift that not very many people have.

I looked at my picture gallery (http://www.firstlightmidwife.com/) and realized that I've helped with nine births so far this year. And every single one of them has been special in a unique way. One of the interesting things about this year is that so far I have twice as many boys as girls. From April 30 to June 4, a period of five weeks, I did five births. And only one of them was a girl! Other years I've "done" more girls. I think this is actually the first year that there have been more boys. Go, boys!

So my busyness has been one of the reasons that I haven't blogged lately. Other reasons include Timothy graduating from high school. He's the last one of my children, so my days of home schooling are done. He had a graduation ceremony on May 24, along with five other homeschoolers in the area. The graduation was very nice, with each family awarding their child his or her diploma, a special speaker, a slide show, and music for their entrance that was not "Pomp and Circumstance!" (How did that piece get to be so special?!!) The day after he graduated, he and older sister Emily and their friend Melody loaded up Melody's car and left for the summer. They are currently working in Melody's sister's restaurant in Colorado. Suffering. Poor things. Jackie and I plan to go see them for a couple of days if the births that I have pending work out so that there are a couple of weeks that are "free."

Anyway, I haven't made any major changes in his bedroom since he left. His room has just become a repository (read dumping ground) for the other things that I've been rearranging around the house. I don't get all gung ho about rearranging, so I only hope that when he returns for a couple of weeks in August that he has a place cleared off to sleep and a little pathway through his room. He won't care. I know, because one of the places to be cleaned is under his bed, and I'm seriously considering using gloves when I do it. Ugh! What was he thinking!

I miss him and Emily and Natalie. Natalie is in North Carolina for the summer. She is the girls' staff coordinator at a summer camp there. This is the third year she has worked at the camp, so evidently she loves it and the people she works with. And I think they also love her. I would also like to go see her if the babies cooperate. I would love to scoop her up from camp and take her to the little island of Ocracoke off the coast of North Carolina for a day or two! Ah, the beach! It's so lovely.

Lately I've been actively waiting with my client for the birth of the next baby. Waiting is so hard, especially when your due date passes with no signs of baby coming. It's hard on the midwife, too, to keep her hands out of it! And in our instant society it really is not politically correct to wait for anything. Waiting is an art that is not in vogue, and very little practiced. It's one of the hardest things I do as a midwife. But the longer I'm a midwife, the more I realize that waiting is worth it. And I also realize that when you fiddle with the natural order of things, things get funky. If I try to get things going (read "induce labor" with natural means), invariably labor just doesn't cooperate, or the labor is long and we have to nurse it along. But it gets harder and harder for the pregnant mom and her husband to explain to all their friends and relatives that no, nothing is dangerous for the baby. The midwife is really keeping an eye on everything. It's really safe to wait. Really. So they resort to screening their calls. Sometimes they put messages on the answering machine that say something like, "Junior hasn't been born. We'll let you know when he is. Everyone's ok. Good-bye!"

Anyway, whenever he is born, we will all rejoice! And he will have been worth the wait. It will be a good birth. And you'll soon see his picture in the picture gallery. I love what I do. Have I mentioned that before?