Feeling sick...

I feel sick. No, I don’t have a cold or the stomach flu. Neither have I broken a limb or have kidney stones. I just got the list for the NC (Normal Childbearing) lottery. Yup, it feels like I was kicked in the stomach. I feel dizzy. Over the summer I felt really calm about it. I had this feeling that everything was going to work out and that things happen in certain ways for a reason. I had trust that whatever would be best for me, higher forces would make it happen that way. It’s gone! This faith and trust is gone and it is replaced by fear and doubt. Fear of having to relocate, of leaving my children, of feeling guilt. Once more the sacrifices that one needs to make to get throught this program has surfaced and I have started to question again if I’m being selfish and if it is worth it. Will I look back and feel that I wasn’t there for my children when they needed me? Will I feel I missed out on their growing up? Regardless of how I’m feeling, the reality is that I need to make choices, and I need to make them fast.  I need to come up with four top choices of where I want to be placed. 

Prior to the list coming out I thought I would have more choices. I’m located in Burlington which is a very central area as far a midwifery clinics are located. There are three clinics in Hamilton, one in Burlington, one in Oakville and one in Mississauga that I would not have to relocate. Brantford is a little bit of a push but maybe an option as well. I was also counting on clinics offering summer placements so that I would have even more choices for staying near home. However, when the list came out, all clinics in a region are pooled together into one choice (thus all three hamilton locations are considered one choice), Oakville and Brantford are not offering placements at all this year and Burlington and Mississauga are not offering summer placements and only have one spot each. This changed things considerably and it has brought my anxiety to very high levels. This list came out on Thursday and our choices need to be in by Monday night. One hell of a weekend I can say. My studying schedule is out the window as I can’t stop thinking about this list. What should I choose? Is there a way to make smart choices as  to maximize the chances of getting what I want? The way I have been explained is that the lottery is run by a computer program that tries to maximize people's chances of getting their first choices. lt identifies everyone who chose a particular place as their first choice, lets say Burlington, and runs a lottery among this people only. Depending on the number of spots Burlington is offering and how may people are bidding for it as their first choice will indicate your odds of getting it. We only know how many spots the clinics are offering but we don’t know how many people are bidding. 

The lottery is run between all three midwifery schools so it’s not like we can just go around and ask our classmates what  their choices are. Now, lets say you do not get Burlington, now your second choice becomes your first, third becomes second and so on.You would think that this is not so bad. But lets say your second choice is Hamilton, and even though Hamilton is offering six spots this year for winter placements, what happens if they already run the Hamilton option as first choice lottery? Then you missed the boat and now you are down to your third choice. So it depends on the order that the lottery ran, which I don’t know how this is decided. Maybe it is just random, how knows? If you don’t get any of your choices you fall out of the lottery. Apparently last year 90 percent of people got one of their choices. But if you are one of the 10 percent unlucky souls you get to start the process all over again with what was left over. Nice!

You can see how this is driving me insane. Should I put as my first choice places that only have one spot and leave the ones that have more for second or third choice, or should I put the ones that have more spots first to increase my chances? I'm going CRAZY! Please make this stop! On top of that, read everything you can on GBS, make charts and notes about the menstrual cycle including anatomy, physiology and hormones, memorize drug names, oh and lets not forget five children. Three teens that need a lot of guidance and supervision and two younger ones that still need a lot of physical and emotional attention. Parent meetings, hockey practice, drama practice, dance classes, gymnastics, teen needs ride to work, hair cut appointment, eye doctor appointment, oh and of course: what’s for dinner tonight? Can I do this? Can I really do this? Or will I be one of those people who does everything badly? The mom that always forgets everything.

Message left by my daughter after I forgot to take her to her last appointment

Maybe I will feel better once I put down my choices and have the results. I’m sure I will deal with whatever I need to and sometimes the anticipation is worse than when you are actually going through it. So stay tuned for the result of the lottery which will be at the beginning of October. I'm having a flash back moment of when I was waiting to find out if I got accepted to the MEP. Once more my future lies out of my control, in this case, a matter of luck. Is it really, or is there a bigger plan that we are just too blind with our own fears to see? Oh well, at least is for only four months. Maybe I’m just being a little dramatic, but than again, that is who I am.

Second Year

I really should be studying right now but I feel I should be writing on the blog more, so I’ll take a minute or two to tell you about my first three weeks. Second year is great! The schedule and the way classes are taught are very different from last year. I only have classes four days a week which means I’m done on Thursday at 12:30 pm and don’t have classes again until Monday 1:30 pm. Awesome! There is no more wasted time between classes waiting at school and unhealthy cafeteria food. The classes I have this semester are Pharmacology, Reproductive Physiology and Clinical Skills.

The schedule is as follow:

Second year – First Semester
Monday	Pharm	1:30 – 4:30
Tuesday	Repro	2:30 – 5:30
Wednesday	Clinical	8:30 – 12:30
Thursday	Clinical	8:30 – 12:30

Pharmacology reminds me a lot of life science but I find the amount of material covered in each class a lot more manageable.  Plus, Bruce (our teacher) is funny and time in class just flies. Repro… Well, I don’t know what to say. The material is kind of like A & P but it is delivered in a much different way. Actually, it is not delivered at all. They use a PBL style to teach this class. McMaster, home of the famous Problem Based Learning approach, uses this style of teaching on many Health Sciences classes. Basically we are put into small groups and are given a scenario. We then have to set our own objectives of what we need to know and learn based on that scenario and go home to research. The following week we are expected to share and teach our group what we found. Needless to say it was a disaster! This is a huge change from the 300 people auditorium type of lecture we got for A& P last year. None of us knew what we were doing and most of us left feeling overwhelmed and disoriented. I felt the panic that followed me through out first semester of first year coming back.

On a positive note, I’m having so much fun with Clinical Skills! This is what I went to school for! This class is full of excitement and I’m resuscitating my love for midwifery again. I have to say that it almost died last year. But don’t worry; it has come back with a vengeance! This course is comprised of a combination of lectures by our teachers and guest speakers, a 12-hour observation shift at labour and delivery, Neonatal Resuscitation course, CPR course (which we need to organize and do it on our own) and a inter-professional workshop called “a day in low-risk obstetrics”. We also have a pelvic teaching day (with real people to practice on) and clinical things like taking vitals, taking blood, inserting IV’s, suturing etc… I’ll keep you posted as they happen. The less exciting stuff includes a group presentation (my group will present on non-pharmacological pain relief), a small paper, a midterm exam and finals. So it is pretty packed, but I’m loving it. A good strategy is to try to do as much of the things you need to sign up early in the semester. I did my CPR before classes started, my Neonatal Resuscitation during first week of class when we were doing mostly introductions. For the inter-professional event I signed up for the first one available and I also already did my 12-hour shift. The idea was to get done as much as I could at the beginning before I’m burned out and avoid exam times.

I loved my 12-hour shift. I was following a L & D nurse and even though I saw the typical OB hospital births (which often is far from the midwifery model of care) it was a great learning opportunity. I felt so empowered by having that student ID card and how that just opened doors for me. For example I was allowed to stay in the room during the epidural administration (which as a doula I was often told to leave). I went into the OR for a vacuum delivery etc.. I witnessed a shoulder dystocia, neonatal resuscitation, epidural, episiotomy and third degree perineal repair as well as the vacuum delivery. I felt pretty confortable in all of those situations and feel I had a good grasp of what was going on and what was involved. However, the part that scared me the most is the amount of paper work that needs to be filled. OMG! It is endless! I'm having this panic moment that all this paper work is going to take me away from time with clients and being the kind of midwife I want to be. All the documentation, abbreviations, forms, requisitions etc… will be a huge learning curve for me.  Talking about paper work and learning curve, I should really get back to studying.  So back to the books…

Time

The perception of time is an interesting one. How I feel about time is changing as I journey through the midwifery program. Contrary to one might think, as I advance through the program I feel less of an urgency to graduate. I am getting more patient and trusting that it will happen. It is time again to go back to school and even though I am excited that I will be going into my second year of the MEP, and thus one year closer to becoming a midwife, I feel time is passing too fast. Maybe this feeling lies in the certainty that I will become a midwife, and the doubt I used to have of ever being accepted into the program  is gone. Even though I said before that I didn’t really enjoy the first year of the program, I am getting more excited about the imminent second year. I am determined to enjoy the process of becoming a midwife and don’t want this experience to slip between my fingers.

This year I turned forty, and as I look back on what I have done with my life thus far, I can say with certainty that even though I often dreamed about and planned the future, I have also enjoyed and lived the moment. I do dream of being a midwife, but being a midwifery student is also part of my life and I don’t want to miss fully experiencing it in expectation of the end result. Much like experiencing pregnancy and labor (or the adoption process as with adoptive parents) is an important part of preparing for motherhood, the time taken to become a midwife will influence and form my attitudes about being a midwife. Some people believe that what is important is the end result, and how you get there does not matter. I don’t agree with this statement. The process of gaining or achieving something is part of how you relate to “that something”.  

Hopefully this coming semester will be filled with much excitement as I learn skills for my first placement, and I will try to share as much as I can about this experience and how it is shaping the midwife I will become. 

Summer Time

I am finally on holiday after fishing all my electives during the spring semester. I am so happy that I got these out of the way. I have two months off now and there is so much I want to do. Everything that I wanted to do during the school year that got postponed is shouting at me saying me, me, me… pick me! I don’t even know where to start. Read great books? Write on the blog? Watch movies? Gardening? Relax by the pool? Play with the kids? So much to do, so little time. When I talk to some of my colleges from the MEP they all seem excited about what is in store for us in September. I? Well, not so much. Maybe it is because I haven’t really had a break since I was doing all my elective courses until now, and haven’t really had time to recharge and look forward to next year’s school. But maybe it is because I got a little disappointed with my first year at the MEP. Yup! There, I said it. I thought that I would love the program and was very excited to start. Before I became officially a midwifery student, I have always been a self-directed midwifery student. I already had midwifery books that I read for fun, I subscribed to more than one midwifery journal, I constantly read research as part of my teaching prenatal classes, I observed midwives working while I worked as a doula and I supported moms and helped them make informed  decisions.  After starting the MEP I felt I took a step back in my midwifery-learning journey. I know a lot of the things we learned in that first year are foundation for other things I will need to know, but I am also certain that I learned things that no midwife will ever need to know. There was very little focus on midwifery and I felt very disconnected from pregnancy and birth and missed the contact and relationship I had with expecting mothers. A lot of time was spent on non-midwifery related classes and even the sciences could have been much more midwifery related. 

I hear that next semester will be more midwifery focused as we will be preparing for our clinical placements and I hope that I will feel more involved with the birth world. I also hear that semester will be a heavy one, and at the moment I can't even think about starting school again since I literally just finished. I had planed to study pharmacotherapy lectures during the summer to become at least a bit more familiar with the terminology, but I decided that I need a break more than anything. Also when I think about September I get a little stressed out as we will need to make our bids for the Normal Childbearing placement lottery. This lottery scares me so much!  For those reasons, I decided that for the next two months I will only busy myself  with my family, cooking gourmet healthy meals, enjoying my pool, camping,  taking care of my house and reading food blogs, which are my latest  obsession. I want to relax and stop feeling the need that I have to be efficient with my time all the time. I want to do the dishes slowly, sip my morning coffee while lying in my hammock and listen to the birds sing. Time is such a privilege in my life at the moment. I still find myself hurrying and scheduling my day to be as productive as possible. During the school year time is my enemy. It is always biting me and telling me to go faster, faster, faster. There are not enough hours in the day to accomplish all that is required of me and I often find my heart racing with anxiety. Today, I am making a conscious decision to slow down and savor the moment.

   Happy summer times!