Midwifery Student Matters: Break Time

Oh my gosh! I knew it had been a long time since I had written, but oh my… I didn’t realize it had been that long. My apologies for the long absence, I won’t even try to make excuses for it. I’ll just dive right into where I had left.

The lottery results were announced in October and I got my last choice, Community Midwives of Hamilton during spring/summer term. Yay for not having to move, crap for not having a summer break. I could be complaining about how terrible it will be to be in placement when my kids are off school and how I’m not going to be able to go camping and all, but instead I will concentrate on how having a summer placement can work for me.

Second year turned out to also be very stressful. I really enjoyed clinical skills but the speed and the amount of information thrown at us was overwhelming. Pharmacology and reproductive anatomy took a great deal of my studying time which often resulted in me panicking before a clinical skills exam having totally ignored it until the day before. I remember one occasion, the day before my midterm clinical skills exam, where I was so frustrated with the interruptions at home that I ended up checking into a hotel so I could study no-stop until the exam the next day. I was so burned out at the end of this semester and my fibromyalgia was so intense that I don’t know how I would have gone straight into a winter placement. Given that the 3 weeks off we have between the semester and beginning of placement are during the Christmas holidays, it really means no rest for me. Even though I absolutely love this time of the year I do find it exhausting.

So, instead of starting a placement completely burned out I took a trip to Brazil with my family. Yes, you heard me right. I went to Brazil for 3 weeks! It was an amazing and invigorating, well needed vacation. I hadn’t been to Brazil in 15 years and I didn’t realize how much I had missed my roots. It was so hot there, with temperatures in the 40’s degree Celsius! The sun gave me the energy I needed for recovery and the laid back pace of being on holiday without schedules or worries relaxed me in a way I can’t remember last time I felt this light. But as with everything, vacations also come to an end.

Now I’m back here in Burlington and the below zero temperature is really getting to me. Within a week of being back I’m already in so much pain again. I can’t even blame it on stress as I have nothing going on right now that is causing me stress. There is only one thing to blame; the weather! Once more I’m grateful that I ended up with a summer placement because I am always so much healthier when the weather is warmer. This way it will be a lot easier for me to cope with the demands of the placement, such as stress and tiredness, without the added physical challenges I experience in the winter.

I feel mentally rested after this holiday and am starting to get the itch to get involved in midwifery again. It is only end of January and I don’t start my placement until the end of April. What am I going to do for the next 3 months? I keep hearing from colleagues about them attending births and I can’t help but feel a little envy. I still have a lot to do before I feel ready to start placement and I have plans to do some more traveling too, but I do dream about how my experience in placement will be. How will I cope, will we manage as a family with the challenge of the kids being off school in the summer, but ultimately how will my body handle the physical demands of midwifery. My biggest fear is that this disease will get on the way of my dream of becoming a midwife. I worry that I will physically not be able to perform my chosen profession. Sometimes I feel I need to move to a place where it is summer all year round. But where could I go and still be able to work as a midwife? Midwifery does not exist in Brazil and for me to work there with pregnant women I would have to either be an obstetric nurse or an obstetrician. Here in Ontario we have an amazing structure for the midwifery profession. It is legislated and regulated, it is also funded by the government, and we are independent and self regulated profession. Sure there are many areas for improvement but compared to any where in the world we have it really good here. If I stayed here, would I be able to take all my vacation time in the winter, go somewhere warmer, and only come back when it is not so cold anymore? I feel so insecure right now. I always do when I’m in the middle of a fibromyalgia crisis. It’s like being in the middle of a blizzard where you can’t see an inch ahead of you and you feel lost and scared. Right now I feel like I’m the midst of this blizzard that is so cold and dark, like I’m never going to see the sun again. But wait a minute! It is cold and dark and I haven’t seen the sun since I came back from Brazil! No wonder! Anyways, probably next time you hear from me I will be in Brazil again for a last fix me up before placement and I’m sure you will hear a totally different tone to my writing.