Zanzibari's, are you ready? Here I come!

I know, I know, it hasn't been a month since I last posted, but I'm going to again anyway!

Ever since I was a midwife student, one of the things I longed to do was to serve missionaries. I'm a missionary kid, and my parents had four children on the mission field. I was one of those children. So I know the desires of some missionaries to just stay put for the big happening. And I also know that some missionaries just don't have access to good care during labor and delivery. So, one of the goals I have had is to deliver babies for missionaries.

I have that chance this year. Bob and Rachael Gwassa, for whom I delivered their first baby on January 1, 2007, are now missionaries on the island of Zanzibar, off the east coast of Africa. They left to go there in December of 2007. Now they are expecting a second child, and we would all like it if I could be there again for this birth.

I will be leaving for Zanzibar on December 1 or 2 of this year, as Rachael's due date is December 12. I plan to be back home for Christmas!!

I will not be receiving a fee for this service, and I am asking for donations to cover the cost of supplies and the trip to Zanzibar. This will take approximately $2000. If you would like to help with this mission of love, you may send money to: Betsy Robinett, 509 S. Bell St., De Leon, TX 76444. If you would like for your gift to be tax-deductible, you may make your check out to Teach the Children International. If you would like more information, you may contact me at mrsnett@cctc.net.

The Whirlwind

Wow! Time does get away.


Let me catch you up. There has been a lot going on...


The baby we were waiting for did come. And he was worth the wait. His was a very nice birth that had a surprise ending as far as where he was actually born -- not the bedroom but the bathroom. When he was ready to descend, he didn't fool around any at all. There were only three minutes from going to the toilet to the birth. Whew!


Then, Jackie and I went to see the kids. First we went to Lake City, Colorado. Shari and Emily reserved a cabin for us there. Lake City is so nice. It's small; you can walk anywhere in town. The elevation is approximately 8,600 feet. There are legends of cannibal guides, and there are old mines, and there are 5 "14er's" close by. "14er's" are mountains that are above 14,000 feet in elevation. We opted to climb Crystal Mountain, just behind Lake City, with an elevation of 12, 990-something feet. We didn't make it to the crest, or to Crystal Lake, but we had a very strenuous walk. We wobbled back down to our car and went to the local bakery for some much-needed lunch!



We went to the Hard Tack Mine and were led around by the guide. It was very cold and dark, informative and enjoyable.


We also took in a play while we were there. The theater is really small, and the chairs are folding chairs. The play was pretty good; we were definitely entertained. The actors were local, and the playwright for the play ("Anchor Baby") is from Colorado Springs. And the main actor reminded me of my webhost, Fred!! He both looked and acted like him.




We stayed in Lake City for two days, made sure Timothy and Emily are doing well, and then we headed toward Natalie in North Carolina.





Um. That was a long trip. We left at 6 a.m. It took us until 2:30 p.m. to get to the Colorado-Kansas border. Then, oh, Kansas is flat! And the same for hundreds of miles. Every 15 miles or so, you see a town in the distance with a white grain elevator, one or two church spires, some trees, and a water tower. But the state is very neat and clean, I'll give those farmers that. We crossed into Missouri at about 10 p.m., and went halfway through that state before we quit for the night in Columbia.


The next day we went through the rest of Missouri, then cornered through Illinois and Kentucky into Tennessee, stayed there for a while, and finally reached the Smokies. Ah, the Smokies! They hug you to their bosom! They are such welcoming mountains. I love them! With fog curling around every hollow, and trees covering all available space. We crossed over into North Carolina, and went to Natalie's camp, just south of Morganton. There we spent the night.

The next morning we took Natalie and journeyed all the way to the East Coast of North Carolina, a little spot called Swanquarter, where the ferry for Ocracoke Island leaves four times daily during the summer. It's a two-and-a-half hour ferry ride, and we sailed into Silver Lake Harbor on Ocracoke at about 6:30 p.m.



We made camp at the National Park and went out on the sand for a while. Oh that's a lovely island! The crabs scuttled around in the dark, scaring Natalie. We saw the lighthouse from our beach, a neat thing in the dark. We ate lobster and fish, and the next day we jumped the waves and scoured the sand for seashells. Jackie found a big sand dollar! He got the prize. It was a lovely sand dollar, a great memento of our day there.


During the hot part of the day, we went to the village and looked through the biggest part of their shops, got wonderful coffee confections at the coffee shop, and had a picnic where we could see some guys cleaning the catch they had made that day. Then back to the beach, to lay out on the sand after jumping some more waves.


We had to leave really early the next day, as all the ferries but that one were booked. Yes, you have to make reservations for the ferry. So we left at 6 a.m. and we took Natalie back to camp, and then continued on our way home. I felt that we needed to get back by July 14, as I was on call for another midwife who was leaving that day. So we bedded down around Commerce, Georgia.


Late that night/early the next morning, we got the phone call. It was 2:45 eastern time. Jackie's mother, our dear, dear Elsie, had just passed away. Saddened, we continued on our journey early the next morning. I know our server at the Cracker Barrel restaurant where we were having breakfast was really worried about me. I was crying all over my pancakes, and trying not to. She just said, and repeated it, "Just pray about it." Well, it was a good hard thing, and you just have to cry when you need to.


Natalie flew to Dallas that day, and got there before us. We picked her up on our way back to De Leon, arriving here at midnight. Emily and Timothy drove in from Lake City the next day. So we were all together. The funeral was Wednesday, July 16, and we all said good-bye to a grand lady. She is in no pain now, and with Jesus. We're glad, but we miss you, Elsie.


The kids all drove back to their respective states on Saturday. So that brings me up to date. Waiting for the next babies...

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?

Happy Birthday, Elsie!

Today is Elsie's birthday. Elsie Robinett is my dear mother-in-law. She is 91 today. We had dinner with her and her four remaining children (we still miss you, Marilyn!)

This is my husband, Jackie, sitting with Elsie just before we ate. The wonderful meal was prepared by Sharon and Carolyn! Thank you, ladies!

And Happy Birthday, Grandma Elsie! We love you!

Transport Tryouts or Bathtub Hubbub

Boy oh boy! I know, I haven't posted in two weeks. I've been thinking about different possibilities for posts, such as the completed quilt that I've been working on for four (yes, four!) years for Emily, or the wonderful radishes and strawberries that are coming out of our garden.

But what I really want to write about is the birth that happened two days ago. So I will.

I was called at 12:30 am by Betty (not her real name) to let me know her water had just broken. Everything was good. The water was clear, baby was moving, no contractions -- yet.

So I told her to see if she could go back to sleep. I tried to. It never works for me. She called again at oh, 1:30 to 2 am, I can't remember exactly when. She was now having contractions every 5 minutes, and no, she couldn't sleep. Uh huh. I couldn't either. But I didn't go to her house yet. She still sounded cheerful. First-time mom. Just a little early.

At 3 am, when Umbert (not his real name) called, I could hear Betty in the background, really working with the contractions, and she had two in the brief conversation that he and I shared. Ok, now it's time to go!

So I got there at 3:15. At 3:30, I check her and she's already at an 8! Wow! Fast for a first-time mom. By 6 am, she's pushing hard. She pushes for an hour and a half before she poops out. She's pushing with pain every time. It's hard to keep going when there's pain with the pushing. There's a bit of cervix that keeps slipping down over the baby's head and she pushes against it every time. Ouch! I try to push the cervix out of the way for her, but the baby's head is so molded that the cervix just slips right back down. It's not much cervix, just 1-2 mm thick, but enough to cause her to give up.

She wants to go to the hospital for pain relief. So we go. The problem is, the hospital won't give pain relief when you're completely dilated. So we stayed at the hospital for a whopping 20 minutes, then Betty signed out "Against Medical Advice" and we left.

The problem at this point is that she's been "complete" since 6 am, and it's now 10 am, and the contractions haven't quit, she just hasn't been pushing since 7:30 or so. Baby is fine. Mom is fine, but hurting with every expulsive contraction every 4-5 minutes. Really ouch! I mention before we leave the hospital that I have a daughter in this town. She has an apartment we might borrow, instead of having another 45-minute drive back home. Surprisingly, Betty takes me up on it!

Now I have to call Emily. Emily is thunderstruck (weirded out -- she's only 20 years old), but responds by calling me when I text her the following message: "Where are you? We need your apartment to have a birth in. This is not a joke!"

We then meet her at her apartment where she is frantically vacuuming. Oh well. We didn't come to see how clean it is, although we thank her for her efforts wordlessly. She and her roommate clear out. Funny how they don't want to be there. I would have! And I really would have appreciated some help, but oh well. Birth is not everyone's cup of tea...

So we clean the bathtub, fill it up, put Betty in it, and she gets going on the pushing again. It's now 10:47. She pushes very hard, but we're still not seeing head, although it's getting close. She gets tired after about 45 minutes, and I suggest draining the water out of the bathtub to clean it and refill it. She complies, lies on the bed for about 30 minutes, taking another break from pushing.

Back into the tub at 11:57, and this time, when she begins to push, we get another burst of energy. It's called hope! Because now, we begin to see baby's head as she's pushing. She redoubles her efforts. By 12:30 pm the baby's head is crowning, and finally, finally! her head is born. Then, her fit is so tight that I have trouble checking for cord around neck, but soon ascertain that there is none. I also realize that I will have to help this baby. Her shoulders are stuck. So I tell mom first to get on her knees in the water, then I tell her she'll have to stand up with one leg on the side of the tub. I finally get a little leverage on the baby's shoulders and we get her born. She responds very quickly to me stimulating her and suctioning a little with a bulb syringe.

At 5 minutes after the 12:41 birth, she is a perfect 10! I'm not sure what Emily will think about this birth in her bathtub, but I think it's pretty cool!

It's a good thing I thought before we left their house that I might need some basic birthing supplies in case she had the baby on the side of the road. We really made use of them at Emily's apartment!

As it was, we couldn't weigh the baby or do some of the other things we normally do postpartum until we got back home. She weighed 8 pounds, 14 ounces! Big baby, first-time mom. Oh, by the way, no stitches were needed for mom.

And we cleaned Emily's bathtub before we left.

This is my birthday table! I can now officially post a picture! Hurrah! Hurrah! See how lovely it is? See the green glasses and the wonderful sunlight? Thank you, Beth, for the beautiful setting, and Rose, for the amazing flowers!

Birthday Birth Day

I had a birthday yesterday. It was great, even though I'm middle-aged, or maybe especially so! I also had a birth day yesterday.

The night before my birthday, sometime between 9 and 10 pm, I think, I received a call from one of my midwife friends. She was also one of my preceptors (another word for teacher) during my days as a student midwife. She wanted to know if I would be on call for her for an impending birth. I immediately thought, "Well, I purposely cleared tomorrow because it's my birthday." But I didn't say that. I said I didn't have anything going. She knew it was my birthday.

Anyway, she had two births going at the same time, and she did the proper thing; she went to the one that was going faster. Then she got another midwife to cover the slower birth. Me. Perhaps she would make it to both. I thought she might, as she said that this particular client had her water break early that morning, and had erratic contractions all day. First-time mom. So I thought maybe my midwife friend would make it to both births.

Well, the husband of the lady that was being saddled with my care, I'll call him David, called just shortly after my friend called. He was wondering how long they should give the "every five minute" contractions before calling me to come, since it would be a 2-hour drive for me. So much for erratic contractions. I asked him to observe his wife -- I'll call her Mary -- for 30 more minutes and then call me back with a report. He called me back. By this time it's 11:18 p.m. They're ready for me to come.

I did go. And the birth was lovely. David and Mary coped with having a stranger come into their home to catch their lovely new baby girl. And I now have a baby that I caught on my birthday. That's a first. It was a nice birth, pretty fast for a first-time mom. Total labor time including pushing was about 11 hours. That's nice, but it still seems long if you're the laboring mom.

I got home yesterday morning by 11:30. I laid down for a nap about 12 noon, waking up at 2 p.m.

Then I got to go to a dinner party held in my honor. The Crazy Ladies cooked for me. The Crazy Ladies are me, Beth, Suzan, and Rose, and Rebekah when she's not in California. They invited my mom and my sister and her kids, and Timothy, my son, as well. And of course Beth's husband Bob and my husband Jackie were there as well. If I knew how to post a picture it would be of the table set for us. Aren't the green glasses lovely? (Just imagine them!! Ok, ok, I'll try to learn how to put a picture up! Soon!)

We had greens from Beth's garden with Suzan's special dressing, then Rose's meat loaf, wonderful baked potatoes, and cooked greens (again from Beth's garden) with garlic bread that Bob prepared. And for dessert there was red velvet cake, made with love by Suzan. She doesn't even have an oven at her house! It took all kinds of maneuvering, but it was so jazzy when finished! It had sprinkles, and curlicue candles that were just fun!

I had three birthday cards in the mail, and one on my email, and several special calls from friends and family...it was a really nice birth day birthday. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Lord.