Wishes, and scattered updates

My wish this week is that I could schedule babies to come on my husband's day off. Or while I'm already at clinic. Or during the night. Just not in the evenings, basically. At my old site we had this great thing worked out (not sure what kind of magic this was...) where my preceptor would call about 5 minutes before my husband got home from work for the night, and I'd get home before he left in the morning most mornings (he'd shuttle the kids off to a prearranged location if not...mornings aren't a big issue for us). The problem is that he doesn't get home until 11. Who the heck wants to watch someone else's kids until 11pm, if I can't get them in the meantime?

It would be way easier if I could tell babies not to come (or be in the process of coming) between 6pm and 11pm.

There are also too many people postdates or needing to have babies soon, and I am a bit apprehensive that there will be a bad scene involving multiple births at once. And I keep telling my preceptors that my student midwife friend's birth is where I'm going if there is any kind of conflict, but I'm not sure they quite believe me. They have the link to my blog, and if either of them is reading: I'm serious. That's where I'm going.

I need to cleanse this negativity and work my way back into a place of knowing it will all work out. Which somehow, it does. Two discouragingly long births with hospital transfers back to back last week, and a bout of illness, and my mood has tended to the depressive for a few days. It'll swing back into balance.

In other news, there is another student at my site now. HALLELUJAH. *see the relief emanating from my body* less clinic *see the happiness*.

My preceptors seem to think that they are entitled to the number of hours I was putting in before the arrival of the second student, and have decided to give me some "projects." Maybe it was the look on my face, or maybe it was always their intention, but the projects are thus far things I'd need to do for my own practice anyway. And totally things I can do at home. I don't care how much I need to do at home. I just want to *be home* sometimes.

(Money rant ahead...no worthwhile text in the remainder of this post...)

I mailed in my midwifery license application yesterday, complete with a check that I don't have money in the bank to cover. Ack! This process is SO expensive. And we wonder why more low income women don't become midwives. Seriously, DUH. It is hard to come up with this much money. THREE TIMES what I was paying for rent during most of my studenthood. OUR MONTHLY INCOME. This money is not easy to come by. Why is that so hard to understand, oh people-who-sit-agonizing-over-why-more-women-don't-do-this? At this point we HAVE to come up with the money or it has all been for shit, but damn, it's not even about not having this kind of money "laying around," it's about living paycheck to paycheck with less than a tenth that money left over every month for "nonessentials" like car repairs and kid shoes.

In short, *NARM THIS IS YOU* where the hell do you get off charging that much (ahem, $700 test fee for student midwives WHO HAVE YET TO MAKE ANY MONEY AT ALL) on top of what we're already fucking paying the state, who at least has an excuse (this is the only time they get money out of us and they need to administer the program)...AND THEN COMPLAINING THAT MORE MINORITIES AND LOW INCOME WOMEN AREN'T MIDWIVES.

What. The. Fuck.

It must be easy, those-who-set-fees, to be in a position of relative financial stability and say "oh, they can come up with that money, they have time to prepare." Yeah, when? While we're racking up student loans with no pay? While we're demanding our spouses refrain from taking overtime, and stay home with the kids some days while we're at marathon births, not earning anything? While we're expending massive amounts of money to commute ridiculous miles to clinic and more births than we'd ever DREAM of doing in a month in our own practices? WHEN, WHEN, WHEN are we supposed to be building up this money?

It's all bullshit. I don't know how I'm getting that money into my account. I just know I have to.