A Little Quality Time With the Steam Cleaner

And aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh do I ever feel better about the state of my "living room."

Her royal BittyPrincessness may not be getting gum again until she can prove her ability to place it appropriately in the trash instead of in the carpet. NASTY.

One area down, two to go ("office" and bedroom). I hate this job but damn do I ever feel good when it's done.

Infectious

Ah, how unfortunate to have something neat to share and not have the mental energy to word-paint.

Called to a birth this morning at 2:45. Hauled my (apparently expanding a bit) rear end out of bed and into Seattle, the usual routine. Laboring woman with a lot of vocal energy and negative thought patterning going on. Her mom (who was herself a mother to 12 - I think that's what they said - children) sleeping on a recliner in the corner. Her little sister arrived a while later, and that is who this post is more about. This young woman was amazing. It was her first exposure to labor and birth, and she'd had no special preparation for it really. It took her a bit to get a feel for how things were going (her sister, the laboring mom, kept her in line - she was the best kind of bossy laboring woman), but before long she was rolling along with it nicely and guiding her sister through the most wonderful guided imagery exercises. This was verbal coaching better than I had ever seen before. Just after the birth, I looked up and saw this *light* in her eyes, this realization that looked very much like "this is where it IS."

I wonder if I saw the conception of a new midwife. It was incredible to see someone light up like that. A little catching even; this sense that yes, this was extraordinary, this everyday birth we just attended. They all are.

I'm not sure if I'll ever know whether she'll take this spark and do something with it. I don't know her well enough to say anything more about it, really, than that I saw something special in her. If nothing else, it re-infected me today, tired and to-do-listed out. If nothing else, birth touched her and she touched me.

Affirmed? Tired...incoherent...

I am so tired this evening.

But today in clinic, amidst the sad and the happy and the uneventful and the, oh, you know, pregnant women, my preceptor wrote and shared with me her evaluations for the end of my placement. And it was lovely. I was never quite sure with her, what she thought. She quizzes me CONSTANTLY and sometimes it seems like I don't know the answers more often than I do. To hear her say that she thought I was very smart and was picking things up quickly and well and advancing nicely...that she wasn't exactly looking forward to switching to a new set of students when she didn't know if they'd fit as well as we did...it was worth an awful lot of tired. Oh, there were not so glowing things in there (mainly - speak up more quickly, you know the answer! be the first to the buzzer!), but nothing hideous. I felt 1) relief and 2) affirmed that I might just be headed towards some sort of decent ability to do this job at some point.

Easter was nice. The easter bunny wanted to go on strike, but somehow (what with all the counting-down and looking-forward the kids were doing) that just didn't seem right, so the easter bunny set her alarm for really fucking early and got up to stuff eggs and hide them. We brought angel food and strawberries to MIL's house and had a happy evening playing with the kids. Until just before we left, when Fran totally screwed his back. Not quite sure what happened, one moment he's wrestling with children and the next he's stuck on the floor (he did make it to his feet 5 minutes later). He tried to go to work today (silly) and called me mid-day with a somewhat "mommy can I come home" tone (um....youdecidebigboyokbye).

I'm so tired I'm not even coherent, so we'll see if this needs editting when I read it tomorrow. So much for doing an exam tonight. I am not even sure I could tell you what I need to get dressed, much less what I need for a successful malpractice suit.