(no subject)
Well the first week of OB/GYN went better than expected. One of my biggest fears was that it would be the final nail in the medicine coffin - fortunately, it hasn't.
Childbirth is an experience which seems very distant to the rosy-Disney-happy bullshit picture created somewhere between Hallmark and hell. Not in the sense that it's a bad thing, of course, but when you take the whole experience and try to conjure up the right way to go about it, it's not just about a baby being born but more about the birth of a mother (and father). It's a very primal thing, probably one of the few some people will get to experience in life besides things like death and seeing human beings come out of another one leaves you feeling a little trippy.
All in all however, I feel oddly very reassured about giving birth should it ever happen to me. There's a whole load of stuff which has been added to the list of, "What people never tell you about childbirth," but on the whole, I feel better about the whole thing. Ask me if I do in 6 years when I'm growing a foetus.
The midwives are pretty much how I imagined midwives to be ;) Perhaps that's a little unfair, I guess out of all of them, only one is a miserable grump (I've altered my time on the labour ward to avoid her shifts) - which you get in any line of work. The rest are generally very nice. I worked long enough at Marie Stopes to appreciate the medic/nurse invisible divide, but generally, a little respect (and a packet of digestives) goes a long way. One thing I will say is that they run like the wind when an emergency alarm goes off, and when it does it's a shit scary time for everyone involved.
Val, one of the midwives is my favourite. She took me right under her wing on the first night, showed me how to palpate an abdomen full o' foetus, talked me through the mechanics of labour and childbirth, showed me how to read a CTG trace, how to do a vaginal examination and asked me about medical school and the work involved. She loves her job and it shows.
My accommodation is how I expected it to be (the skank factor is pretty high in the showers - you come out feeling dirtier than you did going in) but the company is good.
Best part - burgundy scrubs!
Childbirth is an experience which seems very distant to the rosy-Disney-happy bullshit picture created somewhere between Hallmark and hell. Not in the sense that it's a bad thing, of course, but when you take the whole experience and try to conjure up the right way to go about it, it's not just about a baby being born but more about the birth of a mother (and father). It's a very primal thing, probably one of the few some people will get to experience in life besides things like death and seeing human beings come out of another one leaves you feeling a little trippy.
All in all however, I feel oddly very reassured about giving birth should it ever happen to me. There's a whole load of stuff which has been added to the list of, "What people never tell you about childbirth," but on the whole, I feel better about the whole thing. Ask me if I do in 6 years when I'm growing a foetus.
The midwives are pretty much how I imagined midwives to be ;) Perhaps that's a little unfair, I guess out of all of them, only one is a miserable grump (I've altered my time on the labour ward to avoid her shifts) - which you get in any line of work. The rest are generally very nice. I worked long enough at Marie Stopes to appreciate the medic/nurse invisible divide, but generally, a little respect (and a packet of digestives) goes a long way. One thing I will say is that they run like the wind when an emergency alarm goes off, and when it does it's a shit scary time for everyone involved.
Val, one of the midwives is my favourite. She took me right under her wing on the first night, showed me how to palpate an abdomen full o' foetus, talked me through the mechanics of labour and childbirth, showed me how to read a CTG trace, how to do a vaginal examination and asked me about medical school and the work involved. She loves her job and it shows.
My accommodation is how I expected it to be (the skank factor is pretty high in the showers - you come out feeling dirtier than you did going in) but the company is good.
Best part - burgundy scrubs!