Ok! But first coffee...

This is how helpful my well meaning family is: I was staffing my pottery pop up shop and they’d all come to visit (and pity buy) which was absolutely lovely and very supportive. A couple came wandering over, saying they’re looking for something for their elderly mother for Mother’s Day, so I leapt into action offering ideas, “What about a small plate for biscuits, or a soap dish?” Then my dad jokingly suggests some hearing aids. Then my stepmum chimes in too and recommends some batteries for it. THEN they decide pyjamas might be a better idea. So I watch my sale disappear off to k-mart in front of my very eyes! Very funny, but not very helpful. I don’t think they got my sarcasm when I thanked them for their help afterward. Aside from that the pop-up shop was very successful. Interesting that I was really nervous about people coming to look at the things I had made - apparently I’m okay to write about some of my deepest feelings on here but apparently not to say “I made that plate” 🤷‍♀️.

Now I haven’t written for a while as a couple of weeks back entailed four babies in five days, hardly any choosing to arrive in their allotted time spot! So I’ve been a bit manic since. Fitting in the long post natal drives and the two babies that then cam around that massive blood moon the following week!

I was obviously a bit out of practice too. Although I’ve had a few babies over the past month I don’t think I’d been woken from a deep sleep for a while. That day I had sent a client up to the hospital thinking she was possibly in premature labour at 31 weeks. By 10pm she was still having niggling pains and the plan was to keep her in for observation overnight. So by midnight I had managed to stop thinking about her and just got to sleep. At 1:18am the hospital phoned to say she had broken her waters and baby baby‘s heart rate wasn’t great - the plan was for an immediate Cesarean section.

Now when you need five minutes to get dressed and then it’s a 30 minute drive (24 minutes it’s the best I’ve ever achieved with a breech mother, fully dilated it in the back of my car 😬) but usually a total of 40 minutes is the ideal amount of time to get there.

So there’s a chance they would’ve started without me and I wouldn’t be there to support the woman while she was transferred into theatre, which can be one of the scariest times I think. So I was racing, I managed to get out of the house in six minutes and had even made myself the required cup of coffee. Winning. Just as I was juggling all my gear and ripping open the curtains to walk out into the frost, I bashed the coffee cup against the glass door and dropped the whole lot. Coffee EVERYWHERE! So then the decision is do you leave it - or do you just keep going?

It really was everywhere, so back inside I run, turn all the lights on, race into the kitchen to get a cloth and back again to mop it all up. On closer inspection more than a cloth was needed. Back again to get a towel, on the way I throw the cloth toward the kitchen, miss completely and it lands smack on my couch cushions. SHIT!!! Oh well sacrifice those. Manage to wipe coffee off the walls, the fireplace and floor, throw the towel in the laundry, turn out the lights and race out the door. Just as I’m shutting it I think to check the curtains with my phone torch - OMG there is coffee all down them - and of course they are cream - lucky there is a handy cloth on the lounge cushions 🙄!

So then I roar out the door - managing to pull off an unplanned slide on the frosty deck - to the car (which luckily I had remembered to throw an old shopping bag on top of the windscreen so the frost didn’t stop me from driving off in a hurry). It was COLD! I had lost a valuable five minutes to bloody coffee gate.

All that performance and it wasn’t even real coffee. It was freaking decaf because I had wonderful intentions of coming back to bed once baby was out.

But that’s another beautiful homebirth story that I will share soon.

So that was the start of four babies in five days, I made it to the caesarean with time to spare in the end, as the anaesthetist had been called away. Murphy’s law. Never mind, it gave me time to discover the coffee stains on my top.

My liquid retention issues however, were to continue.

A few days later I had a young first time mum in early labour and after wolfing down dinner and laying out some clothes for the middle of the night, I then had a shower and climbed into bed at 8.30pm. Very responsible having an early night I thought. Such forethought!

At 8.32pm the phone rang and she sounded like she was cranking along. So off to see her at home I go. I was annoyed that I had been so organised, if I’d just hung on the couch for a bit longer like I’d wanted to, I would have already been dressed and not having to drag my butt away from my electric blanket.

The son lounging in front of the fire and finishing his dinner (yes I know he doesn’t live at home anymore - seems that he only remembers this when I want him to do something) chose that moment to offer his style of commiseration. He compared my job to the Japanese ‘death row’! Apparently those sentenced are not told when their time is up and go through their days with the knowledge that it could be any moment day or night. Thanks son, really needed that analogy to my on call life 🤣.

A 45 minute drive south later and I arrived at my clients house, things had moved fast so we wanted to check to make sure it was time to head to the birthcentre, wow 7cm - awesome!!

So calculations made. Now I reckon all midwives make calculations - an estimate of how far away birth time is (we know we shouldn’t, because invariably we are not home in bed when we hoped we would be!). I figured a 30 minute drive to the birthcentre, with another two hours of labour, then at least an hours pushing time, probably more. So three hours till baby.

The family packed up while I rang the birthcentre and we left in our seperate cars. They had to get gas so I should get there first easily. But driving along I started to think I deserved a McD’s thick shake for sustenance to get me through the night. The more I thought about it the more it becand an absolute necessity in fact. Besides it was on the way...

When I arrived at the birthcentre they were already there and parked haphazardly - never a good sign. So grabbing my gear I had the foresight to hide the thick shake behind my laptop and race inside. My client was standing beside the bed and the staff midwife had her gloves on crouching between her legs. This position combined with the gloves and her look of relief that I had arrived made me very thankful that I had hidden the evidence of my detour from the family!

Turns out we had another 30 minutes until baby arrived and this amazing mum - blessed with what I would describe as a second time mums birth (but the first time round, if you follow my drift) had her baby in the water to the sound of her whanau singing a waiata of welcome.

Beautiful 😊.

A couple of hours later when baby was snuggled down enjoying a feed with mum and meeting all his new whanau it was time for me to leave.

Hidden under my coat was the offending milkshake. Not the time for it to be discovered by the protective Nans me thinks. So I scooped up all my gear in one arm load to transfer it to the office. As I got to the office door I fumbled the lot and the whole milkshake ended up down the door and into the carpet.

A young boy witnessed the carnage and offered to get his Nan to help. “No NO!!! I’m all good mate - no need to bother her.”

Followed by some frantic mopping up and muttered cursing. That’ll teach me!

Lesson learned: give up coffee; no one needs McD’s in an emergency - It’s not even healthy.

No let’s be honest, lesson learned: get a keep cup with a handle 😉.

Now some time later as I sit writing this I can still see those original coffee smears all down my glass door at home. I can’t believe my mum hasn’t cleaned that up yet 😉

Mum?