Really?! It's been 5 months?!

Oh, life. How it has just meandered and carved itself out like a strong river!

I can't believe it's been 5 months since I last posted anything here. I could've sworn I posted something early in the year. Hmmm. Don't know.

The garden is going well. The peach tree and hops look like they're about 3-4 weeks ahead of themselves thanks to the early warm weather this spring. Nothing incredibly different for this growing season. We've finally started putting together the rain barrels we bought over 2 years ago.Hopefully those will be up and ready for rain soon. Living in Ypsi with a family of 6 (and only 2 of those are young enough that I can still bathe them together!) makes for a very expensive water bill. It pains me to water the gardens from the HOSE!

We replaced our  old hens with chicks at the end of March. I bought 7 (thinking it a good thing to do in case there's a rooster or two in the mix). They probably won't be laying to late August or September, but that's ok. They're really quite cute. Two weeks ago after a very busy evening in the back yard, I finally got the kids to bed and fell asleep myself. My phone rang at 10:30 at night. "Someone's in labor!!" I automatically think. No, it was my neighbors who fortunately were drinking beer on their back porch and noticed a RACCOON in my hen house!! I forgot to lock them in for the night! I ran out there and it had gone, with one my chicks in it's paws. So now we're down to 6 chicks.  Poor little henny.

I've decided (again?) to take a break from midwifery. My first pause at the end of 2010 was after a very difficult year. I took a break, decided to practice but only locally and at a very low volume. That went ok. This year by March, I had a re-think again. After receiving many emails and phone calls about midwives being interrogated at hospitals (by detectives) for routine transports and a couple Indiana midwives being arrested for practicing, my whole being just screamed, ENOUGH!!  I can assure you it has been quite emotionally and mentally challenging to feel called to a profession that is so hard, so rewarding, so incredible...a profession  where families thank you and love you for helping them through birth (or loss)... a profession that demands so much from you, where you earn very little pay and yet you love the work, to have all these hard and wonderful factors is difficult enough, but to add to it that you could be charged as a felon for your work is just too much for this woman.
Especially since we have amazing midwives like Robin Lim, a CPM like myself, who was awarded with the CNN Person of the Year award for the work she does with women in Asia. Ina May Gaskin and Jennie Joseph, both CPMs are going to the Hague next week to speak at an international conference on maternal health. And yet, if you're practicing midwifery in one of the 23 states that doesn't license midwives- the SAME midwifery as these incredible, internationally recognized women, you could be arrested, charged as a felon, taken from your family and lose a ton of money in legal fees.

Sigh.

The other big component of all this decision making comes to changing family needs and dynamics. My mother moved into our upstairs apartment 5 years ago to be on site to enable me to do midwifery/be on-call, as finding child care is the hardest part of being on-call 24/7/365. Over the past year, my mother's health has gotten worse. She has kidney disease that has seemed to accelerate quite a bit in the past 6 months, as well as failing eye sight and some other more minor health concerns. The logistics of having to put my clients first, then my family, has always been challenging. Add to that needing to take my mother to doctor's appointments and surgeries has made my logistic brain explode and praying that on any given day I do not have to be in two places at the same time... I'm definitely feeling the scrunch of being a living example of the "sandwich generation". 

In the meantime, I have two more clients due in the next month. I have no idea what I will do next.

A few months ago I had what I'm (half) jokingly calling my  mid-life crisis. I signed up for yoga teacher training. This is something I've wanted to do for 15 years, but placed way on the back burner because I started having kids, and then I fell in love with birth work and serving pregnant women. It's a good thing. And as mid-life crises go, better than a boob job or a sports car that I can't fit my family in.

And since I really don't have a lot of income coming in  (and we are very definitely a two income family), I've been stressing a lot about money and work and how can I find a job when I'm still on call?!?!?! A few weeks ago I received a text from a good friend asking me if I'd be interested in doing some hospice care work for a local family whose elderly father is dying. I said I'd be happy to help, only if they understood that I'm on call. No worries there.
So for the past 3 weeks I've been sitting 3-4 hours a morning with a dear old man who sleeps a lot and asks for little. Often, he wakes in a little panic, opens his eyes to make sure he's not alone. I hold his hand and try to help keep him warm.  It is very much like midwifery. Sit on hands, protect the space, don't intervene in a process that knows how to unfold. Seek help for comfort if needed. Feed and hydrate. Comfort and love. He's a very lovely man. He's British and speaks very softly. When I am with him I don't feel like I'm just with "some old man". I know that he has lived a very long life. He survived WWII air raids in the East End of London as  a child (the same age as my oldest now).  He has been married and has had children and grandchildren and even great grandchildren. He used to love to dance. There are pictures of him dancing with his wife (who passed away a few years ago). I hold his hand and think about my own British husband. I pray for this man's dreams to be sweet, for his memories to be softened and kind and for his body to not ache too much.
Like midwifery, it is such a gift to be able to just sit with someone who is in transition. I realize that much of our society does not see (or wants to see), these moments of life and death. I can't remember being born and I've not been at death's door yet, but I can only imagine we should be there for each other to bring comfort, respect, a warm hand, a sip of water, a few nibbles of food.
I was supposed to work this morning, but the daughter called me last night to say her dad has had a very rough weekend. He's not eaten in two days and is refusing all meds and even water. He's said a few months ago that he's quite ready to leave this world.
So here I am home with my kids on Memorial Day. We walked down to our local Memorial Day parade. We're contemplating going to the lake. They're hot and cranky.
My thought are on this sweet man I've only known a few weeks and his family. I'm feeling sad and also thankful for the opportunity to get called into these uncommon lines of work. A week ago I attended a birth of a sweet little girl born into water. The second child I had the honor of catching for this family. The next day I was holding an old man's hand, smiling at him as he awoke panicked from some nightmare. It was an intense week. At one point I burst into tears from the beauty and pain of it all, and exasperated, shouted, "Clearly God does NOT want me to be a barrista!!!"

There you go. That's where I am at. Life and death and seeds in the ground. Baby chicks growing and being preyed upon. Fairly broke, kind of directionless, and yet feeling very blessed with abundance. Life is going on all around me whether I want it to or not.