Day 155

I have internet!!!

Thanks to my wonderful, patient, tech-friendly husband, I was able to reconnect to the server tonight and I'm now back to blogging proper-like. How exciting!

I hit my halfway mark yesterday, which I'm actually really sad about :( I can totally separate looking-forward-to-being-home with wanting-to-stay-at-Casa-for-as-long-as-possible, so that they really are two different things. I know that I have to be ready to leave once my time is up, but knowing this is the last time I will have this opportunity makes me feel really upset. It actually hurts me to think about having to say good-bye to these women in a few weeks. Ouch.

Wednesday was a good day, although somewhat emotional. Well, really, with all the hormones as we have flying around here, many days are emotional. On Wednesday, though, I was working on chart review when the midwife and I were kicked out of the office so the cleaning lady could do her thing. We ended up at the table in the clinic's kitchen, where we ended up sitting and talking for a couple hours. I didn't get many charts done, but I got to hear some awesome stories from her. This particular midwife has been here for the past 16 years. In midwifery, that's a long time. She remembers when the clinic used to be one building that was part intern house and part clinic. I can't imagine how cramped it must have been. The showers weren't even in private bathrooms like now, they were just curtains in a row. Talk about limited privacy.

But, along with cramped living quarters comes some pretty hilarious stories, I guess. The midwife started telling me some stories about crazy interns who have been here over the years and how she's able to laugh about it now, but it definitely wasn't funny at the time. What I think is most crazy is that Casa used to be WAY busier than it is now. There once was a time when they were doing 90 births a month here, with 100+ citas everyday. In desperation, women used to actually swim the Rio Grande in labor to get here. Now, with the border patrol and drug war, we're down to an average of 30 births a month, in a good month. Everything changed after 9/11, when the border security got tighter. That's a whole separate political discussion, but I can't help but wonder in amazement what those crazy busy days must have been like.

She told me the story about the one night when they had 11 births in just 18 hours. All the birth rooms were full, so they started putting women in the classroom, in the kitchen, and even in the interns' beds. She remembered having to call in as many staff midwives and residents as she could, to manage it all. She laughed as she told me how, at the end of the night, she was so exhausted she couldn't even get herself in her car. Her fingers hurt, her eyes hurt, her hair hurt. But, man, that adrenaline. Those must have been some amazing times. I loved hearing her stories.

I went to zumba in the afternoon (still loving it!) and in the evening, the night shift midwife wanted to watch the movie "For Colored Girls," so we all gathered in the clinic office and hoped the doorbell would stay quiet for a couple hours. I really liked the movie, but it was definitely intense. I would recommend it to any woman, but it seemed to especially strike a cord with the women here at the clinic. There wasn't a dry eye in the whole place at the end of the film. When I said that I respected the midwives here for what they've seen and experienced, I was thinking about situations like some of the ones in the movie. I never really got why some people sometimes have such a strong "I could never do what you do" reaction to my work, but I know that because this work is all done by, for, and about women, especially on such an intimate level, there are some mighty powerful experiences involved. It's part of what makes this work hard and scary, but also part of what makes it wonderful and empowering. I so wish I had discovered this sisterhood back when I was a teenager. But then, everything happens as it's meant to.

Speaking of which, today was kind of a rough day. We were short one intern, since one of the students had been taken off shifts for a few days until she could get her act together. A was the staff midwife today and she scheduled me in the intern shift, so we could have full coverage. I certainly didn't mind, because I always enjoy working with her. Or so I thought...

At this point, we have developed a pretty cool personal friendship, and I have tried really hard to make sure she knows that I would never take advantage of that and jeopardize our professional relationship. Today started out great, since we both had such a great time when we went out the other night. Once a client arrived in labor, though, things changed. Instead of being two friends working together, she was the staff midwife and I was the resident. I'm trying to be careful about how I word this, because I'm certainly not complaining, I'm just a little frustrated about how I didn't feel I lived up to her expectations or my own today. I guess the short story is that the lines between personal and professional got blurred and I was unclear about what exactly my role was supposed to be at the birth. When I hung back and didn't take charge like I normally would, I felt like I was disappointing her, but really I was disappointed in myself. I don't know what my point is. I just feel like I fumbled today and didn't exactly earn anyone's respect. I deferred to my friend, who also happened to be my superior. Complicated, I know.

Ugh, anyway. We did have a hilarious moment this morning, though. As the night shift midwife was leaving, her husband dropped off her kids for the morning pass off, so they spent a few minutes at the clinic overlapping with A, who was just coming on. One of the kids is a five year old girl named Olivia who is just the cutest kid ever. She had her Rapunzel Barbie doll with her and she was playing around with A. A got a bright idea to tie the doll's long hair around the doorknob of the office door so that she doll hung down by her hair. When she went to unhook the poor barbie doll, she pulled down thinking the hair would just release and untangle. Instead, the doll's entire head separated from the body and was left hanging on the door! Olivia was so shocked she just stood there with her mouth open and her lip quivering, trying to decide whether she was going to cry or not. Poor thing! A stood there looking at Olivia, with HER mouth wide open. Oh, the expressions! A was so sincerely apologetic and surprised about what happened, but at the same time, the rest of us couldn't help but start to giggle. The stifled giggles got harder to hide and built up in intensity, so that the second poor Olivia was out the back door, we all exploded into hilarious laughter, with tears rolling down our faces. OMG, we'll never let A live it down. The headless doll has now found a home in the clinic's office and A had to stop at the toy store on the way home today in hopes of finding a suitable replacement barbie. Serves her right, the big meany :)