Learning Curve Baby

I've been asked time and time again, how do I know I want to be a midwife if I've never actually been to a birth? I'm not really sure how to explain the primal draw I have towards women in their child-birthing year, it defies logic or reason. Since I was 16 I'd spent my all my creative energy in artistic renditions of full term pregnant women. Why? They seemed to be the only thing worth focusing on. It seems as though the urge to be around pregnancy and birth had been an integral part of who I was for years before I made the decision to pursue a career in that field. 

As soon as I set my sights on midwifery I knew intrinsically it was what I should be doing. And after a year down the long road towards my education I still hadn't attended a birth. Well my patience finally paid off. The midwife wonder in Elandskraal spends her free time and energy assisting home births for women in the provincial system. Community births. These women are usually young, poor, and are met with much harshness in the provinicial hospitals. Mandi offers a safe and loving alternative for these marginalized women to have an empowering birth experience. It doesn't come without it's challenges though as most women don't find Mandi until the tail end of their pregnancy, where she has zero control or influence on their early prenatal care. This young mother Mandi was assisting was my age and in a loving relationship. It was her first birth and was expected to be straight forwarded and simple. Birth is wildly unpredictable. 

The mum started pre labour contractions Sunday night while we were all enjoying a lovely South Africa braai but she didn't actually go into active labour until the next night after her water broke. Monday night her water broke and she arrived at Mandi's house around 7pm. Within 4 hours the baby was out. It was slam-bam thank you ma'am fast. I was so lucky to be able to see Mandi and her volunteer doula friend (a birth professional for over 10 years) working at their highest level of intensity. 

In one birth I was able to see a young woman give birth in a loving environment, how to handle undetected meconium at the moment of birth, the swiftness needed to respond to a postpartum hemorrhage, how to start a baby who didn't really want to breath, how to suture bilateral labial tears, by means of the placenta how to recognize long standing poor nutrition, how to recognize bacterial pneumonia in a baby less than a few hours old, AND how to deal with a hospital transfer (for the baby's pneumonia) after a home birth and the buracracy involved. AND I was lucky enough to see a true knot in the umbilical cord something that happens in 1 in every 5000 births. It was the most intense 24 hours of my life. And after debriefing, reflecting, and running on pure adrenaline for hours, I reaffirmed that this is exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. 

I had a distinct moment of reckoning an hour or so after the birth in the midst of the post birth whirlwind. I was standing near the bed, just trying to acclimate for a moment. I saw the mother exhausted, I saw the midwife with a face of serious steel eyeing up the suture job in front of her, I saw the blood and sweat, and smelt the smell of bodies and birth, and for a brief moment I thought, "who the hell would do this to themselves and have children willingly?" It was just so damn intense. Just then Mandi asked me to pick up the baby so the dad could wash his hands. And I picked up the tiny 3.45kilo chocolate marshmallow and she looked at me and I thought, "Ahh yes. This is why..." I just melted and after all that craziness I realized it was totally worth it. Birth is not scary, it's an unbelievable event in the human life cycle. I can't wait to do this forever.