The Big Dipper.

I’ve survived a couple of full moons since I last wrote. Needless to say they came with their ups and downs.

Covid meant that instead of the planned three weeks in the South Island with friends and family, we managed four days in Napier - just hubby and I. We had such an idyllic spot freedom camping on the beach - with a daily dolphin show even - that we stayed in the same place the whole time and just biked everywhere we wanted to see. All perfect until we ran out of power at 10pm one night. Determined to be positive we read our books by gimmicky beanie torches - looking like glow in the dark Smurf’s - and decided we would head home in the morning before the weather closed in.

However we woke up to pouring rain. We had been watching a movie the night before when the power ran out - so the satellite dish was up on the camper. Now you can’t drive with that up, it would be our luck it blew off and killed someone. But the solar panels weren’t charging in the rain. It took us till 3pm hiked up in the cold to get enough power to put the dish down and head home. Still at least we got away! The Aucklanders didn’t.

Covid returning with the delta vengeance threw us all into a spin at work again. For me this meant figuring out what is and what isn’t allowed to happen at the hospital with my clients. The rules seemed to change on a daily basis and sometimes from shift to shift. Mostly around who can support a woman in labour, what family she can have present and even if I’m allowed to attend.

This culminated in a very difficult time for one woman when we first went to level four. She had made a sudden decision to return to family in my area just before lockdown. My holiday plans changing meant I had space to take her on. It wasn’t like I was doing anything else 🙄. At only 18 she was looking forward to the support of her mum for the birth of her baby, a baby that was keeping its own clock and was now 10 days past it’s expected arrival day. Her previous midwife has booked her in for a post dates scan. After that result I was going to meet with her and do some induction acupuncture to get the ball rolling.

But the scan showed baby had low fluid around it. Otherwise called waters, or in midwifery speak ‘liquor’. (No, not like the beer. Said ‘like-wah’.) Anyway that’s off topic but always funny when a mifwifery student says it wrong the first time.

Low liquor means baby could be at risk and the recommended obstetric plan is to induce and get the baby out as fast as possible. Now at 18 this woman is considered a minor in the eyes of every mother of a teenager - just not in the eyes of the hospital system. She’s an adult, with no special allowances made.

So ‘up the hill’ I send her, still to meet her face to face. To be dropped at the door by her mum and entering those doors to have a baby all on her own. The level four rules at that time were that she could have one family member with her once in established labour. But we still had to get her into labour! That can be a notoriously long process when a woman’s body isn’t actually ready.

So she was four days on the ward in an isolated room that she wasn’t allowed to leave. Face timing her family while she was given pills that didn’t work, having vaginal exams and pessaries placed inside her and finally a catheter inserted inside her cervix to manually cause it to expand.

That’s a lot.

On your own.

At 18.

I would talk to her twice a day at least and explain why the plans kept changing and what to expect next. When she finally did get into established labour I had to explain that the rules that day said I wasn’t allowed to come and support her. They weren’t running the risk of a community midwife bringing covid into the hospital when they already had staff for the job.

That was heartbreaking.

She eventually had her baby vaginally with her mum at her side and by all accounts coped amazingly well. However baby was large and needed to stay at the hospital for blood glucose checks. This meant Mum got sent home and this poor young woman went alone to the ward with her brand new baby two hours after it was born. On her own. I can’t imagine being on my own after that.

Eventually she made it to the birth centre and could have a support person stay, but I still wasn’t allowed to visit. Seven days after going into hospital she made it home to her family and I finally got to meet her. She said my support had been invaluable but I have never ever felt so helpless and frustrated.

On a more private note, this week I’ve been really ill. I don’t do ill, I tend to physically break something instead. Usually due to a horse. Actually no not due to the horse, due to the rider 😉

On Thursday night I went to the loo in the middle of the night and bounced off the wall on the way. I thought I had got up before I was properly awake and scooted back to bed. The next morning the walls were spinning and I fell over putting on my undies 😬. Not a good look. Then after brekkie my man threw a sock at me. I ducked and then I spewed. The nausea had begun. So basically this is all his fault.

The nausea was so extreme with every movement of my head that the hubby decided to consult his procedures book and do the epley move on me. Sometimes these positional head and body changes can move the culprit crystal in the ear (causing the vertigo) back into the right place. And usually the sudden movements will make the person vomit. Oh joy. Couldn’t wait.

The fact that he was reading out loud from the book while he did it really didn’t fill me with confidence. Anyway it didn’t help, so he left me in bed to go move the horses and we planned to go to the doctors later if it wasn’t better.

15 minutes later I got a phone call. “The horse just kicked me in the head. I need stitches”. Bloody hell. Of course you do 🙄.

So with the teenager then recruited as a driver off to collect him we go. Amidst lots of yellling by me to drive more smoothly. She thinks she’s Possum Bourne. We turned up to find him clutching a blue inco sheet to his head and looking a little sheepish. Off to the doctors we both went.

They made sure I wasn’t having a stroke and sent me home with anti nausea pills. Which didn’t work. So then I had to be submitted to injections in my butt from my man instead. Great times.

Anyway after a week I think I am slowly improving. But it’s fooled me a few times now, so I’m not counting my chickens. Hubby has yet another rakish scar above his eyebrow to add to his collection. Man I would have so loved to have stitched that myself - he was very relieved I was too crook 🤣.

We also had to get our cat put down this week. All four of us went, but couldn’t go in to hold him. We had to leave him at the door of the vets in his cage. Then wait till he was left outside on his own again for us to take home to bury. That was tricky.

This week can just f*#% right off I’ve decided.

So I write this from the prone position, which is all good until the next time I need to eat and the teenager has muted their phone. Or worse I need a wee 😬.

While I’ve been literally flat out for the past week I’ve had plenty of time to think on how rapidly our world is changing. The compulsory covid vaccine mandate for my colleagues has sent many of us into a spin. I don’t want to start a debate on pro or anti vax, but midwifery has always been a profession that prides itself that at its very essence is our advocacy for informed choice and consent. It’s what we base our practice on. Not TELLING our clients what to do, but giving them all the information available - both sides of the story - the risks and the benefits. It’s not the easiest or quickest route, but then we can support them in whatever decision they make. We can do this wholeheartedly because we know that they have made an informed decision they haven’t taken lightly.

So it grieves me when I hear people say that midwives, nurses, teachers and anyone else affected by the mandate have a choice to stay working. But that they are choosing not to.

That isn’t the case.

They are only choosing not to vaccinate.

It’s not a decision they took lightly. They want to keep being midwives. They want to keep supporting their families. They aren’t ‘choosing’ to leave their vocation. They aren’t quitting.

And in my circumstance that will leave me with no back up partner for time off. Now I really will be 24/7. Every single hour of every single day I need to be close to home and ready to drop what I’m doing and go to someone. My wandering, horse riding soul just screams at that. Its not going to be sustainable. I’ve worked hard to lower my caseload and find balance so I can stay in the game. What does the government suggest I do now?

Let alone the many, many women across New Zealand that are about to abruptly lose their midwife. They won’t get another one. There just plain aren’t enough of us left.

I’ll just leave that here. x