Reality bites

I’ve just started listening to an audiobook called The Pull of the Stars, by Emma Donaghue. It’s about a midwife in Ireland during the 1917 flu pandemic. Boy are there loads of correlations to Covid 19. Not so much here in NZ now, as we thankfully sit at level one/two but in Melbourne and the States the similarities are very high. And very depressing. Sobering alright. But a good read!

After an awesome horse ride in the hills this morning - one of those rare ones where there was no chance of coming off - and a short episode with the 18 yr old using nugget to make his moustache show up. No words for that 🙄, I headed off to work.

As I’m tootling along on my long drive out to the coast to do a postnatal visit today I listened to the audiobook - when I wasn’t listening to my locum shouting at me as I went in and out of coverage. Then the sudden silence as she hung up on me! Young people today, they have no patience 🤣. Anyway, a three hour return trip in the rain ruined my chance of beautiful views so I had loads of time to think on the book. I also managed time to step in dog poo, but that’s another, more lingering matter, solved halfway home with some avid grass scraping.

I could never have been a nurse or midwife in that time. The rules!!! I like to nod and smile then sneak off to do my own thing. I also like not ironing. That uniform would have been the end of me. I remember going to a wedding when my daughter was five, dragging the ironing board out and she thought it was a surfboard! No chance of her being tied to household chores I guess!

The dreaded Matron on the ward would have just been a challenge to me to either ‘bait the bear’ or convince her I was perfect so I could then bend the rules! Interestingly when I was in the army reserves (to pay my way through uni as a teenager) I towed the party line well. But then if you didn’t, it was extra drill on the parade ground, extra weight in your pack, extra floors to scrub with a toothbrush. Looking back these are all physical punishments and being naturally inclined to the couch (unless an adventure is involved) it probably explains my compliance. The yelling in your face never worried me, but probably because everyone got yelled at, I never felt singled out, it was par for the course. It’s amazing what you can get used to as normal. Also of interest is that the army is the least sexist place I have ever worked. And I’ve had a myriad of jobs. We private’s were all equally the bottom of the barrel and there is a huge camaraderie in that!

So back to the wards in 1917. Although the stringent standards around patient cleanliness and acting all ‘proper’ have relaxed, the actual midwifery hasn’t changed much. So many people think we are all “One born every minute” with bells, whistles and drugs galore. But for most women in NZ birth is actually much more “Call the midwife”. A natural and calm, although incredibly intense process. With usually only one health professional getting a squizz at your fanny! And no we do NOT remember your fanny afterward. Shave it, don’t shave it, draw a picture on it, whatever, they all blend in to one in the end! It never ceases to amaze me that women are nervous about us seeing their vaginas. So worried in fact they will go to a beautician and get a Brazilian beforehand. Ironic much? All that vajazzling - so wasted on me!

The tv ‘reality’ shows around birth are generally a disaster and freak many of my clients out. I was facilitating the birth talk with some first time parents this week and they were traumatised by what they had seen on one of these shows. I spent the next hour explaining what was actually normal. How an edited version that goes from one extreme to the next cuts out all the boring time where you just hang out and wait. It’s not first niggle to instant blood bath like they feared. you should have seen their faces when I said a first baby usually takes two hours to push out! Priceless. They were gobsmacked. He, because he thought the waters broke and baby fell out while you were still at the supermarket and she because she didn’t want to push for two hours! Gold.

I guess a quiet, long birth with lots of downtime in a dark room makes very poor television. And the seamless, fast ones that come in the car don’t have a chance to be filmed. But this new edited version of birth that leaps from one drama to the next is not actually the norm. Yes things often don’t go according to plan, but they are generally calmly resolved and the woman should always feel she’s in control of the decisions made. I can’t watch those shows. They make me so MAD!!! And sad.

The best compliment I’ve had for a while occurred the other day. She didn’t even know she’d given it. This was the client I mentioned earlier who ended up in theatre with a quite traumatic ventouse and forceps birth. She said just in passing that not once did she feel fear. Wow.

Job done right there ✅