More firsts

 I went to my first Wisconsin Midwives Guild meeting in Madison yesterday.  I started off the day with a quick and fast lesson in driving in near blizzard conditions and my car had its first salting.  I do hope driving won’t be this treacherous most of the time. 

The guild meeting was what I expected.  I say that because I was part of Louisiana’s Midwifery Association and had attended many meetings before.  Today, since many students and midwives at MANA, it was a small crowd.  I had the opportunity to meet many of my fellow students in the classes I took online in the spring. It was a nice opportunity to put names with faces and see whom is studying where and apprenticing with whom.  Not that I was surprised, but in Wisconsin there are many more students than there are midwives, just like in Louisiana. This makes me happy and sad at the same time. I am genuinely thankful that resurgence in midwifery is taking place, but not excited about having to vie for the same slot with many other eager midwives-to-be. 

I also had the awesome opportunity to attend my first Amish birth.  I very much appreciated everyone’s acceptance of me at the birth.  While I am still getting used to the culture of the Amish, I am becoming more comfortable with their nuances, which is a good thing, as I am not taking it as personal anymore.

The couple was so sweet and loving, but in a distant sort of way, different than of an English couple.  The husband did provide labor support, but it was humorous to see how, in spite of obvious uncomfortableness, the mother did not insult or disrespect the daddy, even though she pushed him away as the head was crowning.  These Amish women definitely live up to their stoicism!  This amazing mama HAD to finish milking the cows before birthing the baby. She hardly made a peep the entire labor, although she was clearly working hard.  The baby had an unusually bluish dusky head, which was hard NOT to stare at, but the hands, feet, and the rest of the body were incredibly pink and looked well perfused. It looked like maybe the baby his face pressed in a weird place during labor, breaking superficial blood vessels or bruising it.

It was equally as awesome to attend a birth with a calm, relaxed, non-dramatic midwife.  I loved her hands-off approach and trusting ways.  She did not jump to the pit right and really allowed the mom to trust her intuition while birthing. The placenta, although it looked meaty and healthy, had 3 nodules in it that were like fatty deposits—something I had never seen before. It was cool to encounter that anomaly.  I am definitely looking forward to my next Amish birth.