Guest Post - Katy's Experiences as a Midwife's Apprentice

Today, my sweet friend, Katy, has written a fascinating post for us about her experiences as a midwife's apprentice. Katy previously studied mechanical engineering, so this is a major life change for her! She has a warm, generous, and nurturing spirit, and I know that she'll be wonderful in her chosen profession. Thank you Katy, for sharing these powerful stories with us, and yes, you can come to my birth! Pray that the weather is decent so you can get up the driveway ;).

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. Please drive safe today! We got a whole two inches of snow here. You jealous? It almost covers the grass.

What an honor to write for Heather. I discovered her blog as a young wife and mother and she helped me through the early times of house management. Now that I’m getting the hang of it I continue to learn from her about contentment and joy. Thank you so much, Heather. You’re a blessing!

In mid-October I traded a major in mechanical engineering for an apprenticeship with a midwife. This was a radical change in my life and it took an enormous amount of faith. I was thrilled to hear Heather was planning a homebirth and I would like to share my view of birth at home. I am sorry to readers and Heather that this got so long. I have enjoyed putting these stories into words and I could go on even longer. God is doing some major “remodeling” in my life and each birth I attend teaches me a little more about who He wants me to be. Birth takes a sense of humor but it also takes a feeling of reverence. It is life in its rawest state and God is using those quiet (and not so quiet) moments to teach.



Murphy's Law of Midwives: Babies will be born at a time most inconvenient for the midwife.

When lentils started to overpower my enchiladas my husband banned me from using fillers in beef. He didn’t say anything about chicken though so when I found turkey at 40 cents a pound I just couldn’t resist. I wasn’t sure he would appreciate this find quite as much so I decided to hide it in the freezer. This was not my highest moment as a wife but for 40 cents a pound I can be shameless. I came home with 45 pounds of bird and a plan to thaw it, carve it, bag it, and freeze it before my husband’s return.

This was November 3 and Tina had been due October 30. This was going to be my first birth as an apprentice midwife and I had spent the last four days checking my phone constantly and jumping every time it rang. Wouldn’t it be terrible, I thought, if she finally went into labor in the middle of my turkey carving? But I was sick of delaying life for a phone call, and it was 40 cents a pound.

As I was lifting the first thawed turkey out of the water-filled sink my phone rang. I picked up the phone with a towel and pushed the button with the tip of a finger. It was the midwife.

“Hello there. Tina might be doing something. Contractions started a half an hour ago but she’s not sure this is it. Just be ready, I want to get there quick when things pick up. I told her to call again in an hour.”

This was Tina’s seventh baby. Number 5 had turned her daddy into a midwife when she entered the world a little faster than expected. They lived 30 minutes away and we had to be ready. But surely there would be time to carve at least one of the turkeys, right? She wasn’t even going to call for another hour.

Twenty minutes later the phone rang again. This was it! My adrenaline soared as I realized I was finally going to a birth. I had to go! I had to get Ben to the sitter! I had two naked birds on my counter! How do you hide 45 pounds of turkey? How do you do this in a hurry? Why had I bought them in the first place? 40 cents a pound, 40 cents a pound. I repeated the mantra as I crammed them into the fridge. I would just have to ask forgiveness from my husband since I didn’t ask permission.

The plan was that I would take Ben to the sitter and then make the 30 minute trip with the midwife. But by the time I dropped him off and called to arrange a meeting place, she was already two towns away. She had a feeling, "Midwife's intuition," and didn't want to wait for me. She told me to call when I got to the town and get directions to the house.

My adrenaline was still on a high as I drove through a painfully slow speed trap. I called a half hour later when I passed the city welcome sign.

"Hi, I'm at the first stop light."
"Hello there! We have a baby."
Oh….

I arrived 5 minutes later, pushed through six very excited children, and walked in to see mom and baby sitting in a draining bathtub. She looked radiant. After normally going two weeks past her due date, she was thrilled this baby was a mere four days late. I told her to thank a turkey.


"We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong." ~Laura Stavoe Harm

Liz was due on November 23. She was born in Pennsylvania and carried all the homemaking grace of the Amish and Mennonite culture. On a missionary trip to Ghana this 5’2” ray of sunshine met a 6’6” Southern gentleman with crystal blue eyes. Chad knew it was love and called up her father the second he touched American soil. The six months he waited for her hand were easy because, "It easy to wait when you know what you want."

Every prenatal visit brought fresh mint tea from the herb garden and homemade cookies in the company of a living room full of grandpas, uncles, sisters, and mothers. Men wore plain, button-down shirts and women wore hand-sewn dresses with white head scarves. Their home was filled with warmth and not just the kind coming out of the cast iron wood stove.

Her labor started slowly during Thanksgiving dinner and we arrived shortly after midnight. The stove labored to provide heat to the back bathroom and Liz labored quietly in the tub with her husband at her side. We left them alone and sat in the overheated living room with both grandmothers. These normally stoic matriarchs sweated as they nervously stabbed at needlework and prodded us for any information about their future grandson.

Some women want help during labor; wanting to be held and told positive things and to be surrounded by women and confirmation. Some want to be left alone; to labor in a corner, in their own dark silence. This woman wanted only two things. The first was to grasp the hand of the closest person and stare steadily into their eyes as each contraction overtook her. Her husband’s blue eyes looked back and in those quiet moments everyone else felt like an intruder. I selfishly hoped I would be the closest hand just once. I wanted to stare back into her eyes and see the unspeakable power behind the biggest feeling a woman can experience. But she had more humble plans for me. The second thing she wanted was more warmth from fresh boiling water. For four hours I carried pots of water from the sweltering kitchen past the cast iron stove to the steamy bathroom.

The pushing stage brought a problem. The cervix had not moved in line with the birth canal making pushing efforts ineffective. This problem would have resolved with time but Liz had been preparing the Thanksgiving meal since four that morning and her exhaustion was growing. The midwife chose to use her skilled fingers to pull the cervix forward until pressure from baby's head held it in place. This adjustment focused her labor pain and caused the only vocalization of her labor.
"Oh baby! Oh baby! Please God help me."

In the bedroom the grandmothers paced and prayed and their grandson entered the world at 5:25 am. By 6 he was wedged between mother and father in the family bed. The grandmothers took their wiry energy and spun it into breakfast. From a warm kitchen a master midwife and a midwife’s apprentice walked out in the icy morning. Life went back to normal.


Midwifery: The fine and ancient art of applying one's hands squarely to a chair, then placing one's posterior region firmly atop the aforementioned hands.

Birth number three was NOT the charm. My call came at 5:00 in the morning, walked out the door at 5:20, and an hour later midwife and assistance drove up to the house. As we entered the home we wondered if this baby had beaten us there like her older sister before her. I was so confident in a fast birth that I left my husband with 15-month-old Ben and said I’d be home in time for his work at two. Amanda was moaning loudly and a check of her dilation found her to be 5cm, not quite the number we were expecting. At ten she was still 5cm. At noon she was still 5 cm. I called my husband and once again explained that babies can’t read clocks. He got Ben to the sitter.

By 2 in the afternoon she had advanced one centimeter and contractions had almost stopped. Everyone was tired and growing disappointed with the situation. For us, simply being in the house was exhausting. From the toddler-urine infused couch to the grease coated kitchen it appeared cleaning products were not allowed through their door. The gas stove couldn’t fully boil water through the encrusted grate. The torn, foam toilet seat cover was a Petri dish of visible mold. The midwife and I precariously balanced on the edge of the couch until our backs ached. We needed fresh air to breath and clean food to eat. We told Amanda to take a rest while we went to town for lunch. We found excuses to stay out of that house until four when the small town shut down for the night. We found her sitting on the couch listening to Jeff Foxworthy’s Christmas CD. Had they rested we asked. No, they had had sex. Seems her grubby, torn t-shirt was the lingerie of choice, explaining their three children in three years. At least Charlie was getting a good sleep.

The midwife checked her again and she was still 6.5 cm. Amanda started crying and begged to have her water broke. “I just want it out. I just want to be done." So did we. After manually breaking her water the first truly strong contractions began. She walked, she rocked, she got in the tub, she got out, she peed, she moaned, she ate, she said, "Oh shoot!" over and over and over. We gave up trying to avoid smells and germs and took a nap on the couch. An hour later, 9 cm. At 7 I began to get engorged. At 8, 9.5 cm. More walking, more in and out of the tub, more peeing, a little gas. At 11, still 9.5cm, but she felt like pushing. Good. At this point I was contemplating stealing the new baby to nurse.

For the next 61 minutes Amanda lost control—she thrashed half the water out of the tub, she kicked the midwife in the ribs, she slapped her husband in the face, squeezed my fingers in a death grip, and explained every contraction with vulgarities. She was like a red-faced child throwing a fit.

A minute after midnight their baby girl slipped into the water, silent, motionless, and grey. As I held her by the heater later that night she seemed to slip in and out of this world. I rubbed her head and forced her to peer out between wet eye lashes, “Come back little girl. God gave you an odd lot in this life but He put you here so stay.”

The real lessons…
Recently an apprentice friend experienced a touchingly powerful birth. The spirit of God was so present that it moved everyone to tears. I told her I think moments like those are rewards along the path. Birth reminds me that God is in control but I am still doubting and learning. Hopefully I will witness a birth like that but for now I need something a little more humbling. I am stubborn it is taking every second of waiting, every bit of heat, and every difficult moment to shape me. Thankfully God knows just what I need and He is paving each step with humility, servant-hood, and perseverance.

I never understood the meaning of a vocation until I discovered this calling. I think it is the way God reaches us, the place He uses us to be like Him. I see now that while being a wife and mother is my first vocation, being a midwife is undoubtedly my second.

Heather, I wish you short labor (but not too short!), a wonderful birth, and all the blessings God has to offer. And I hope you don’t mind if I come to your birth. It’s not that long a drive!