I feel as though the last week's flown by, undocumented. (Well, partially undocumented...)
Last Monday, we had another installment of Anatomy and Physiology (hereinafter referred to as A&P), to discuss organic chemistry, cells and tissues (including all that high-school biology, like mitosis, DNA, phospholipid-membrane permeability, and such), and finally the integumentary system (more affectionately known as skin). It was a long day in class (9am to 4pm), but it was interactive and stimulating nonetheless.
On Thursday, Alice Sammon came to teach us for our final lesson in the History of Midwifery. Alice was part of the original group of apprenticeship-trained midwives in the US in the 1970s, which includes Ina May Gaskin, who came together to establish the Midwives Alliance of North America. These were exciting times for American midwifery and its development as a profession, and of course Alice had all the juicy stories to tell about the dynamics of this group of women, and how MANA achieved what it did. It is nothing short of a revolution, how this kind of organisation could spring up out of the ashes of "granny" midwives in the American South, out of the American Medical Association's political slaughter of midwifery's respectability, and be reborn as a professional body that not only supports and promotes direct-entry midwifery (and home birth by extension), but also accredits midwifery education institutions (including Birthwise) across the country. NARM (North American Registry of Midwives) is an offshoot of MANA, and it is the NARM exam that I will take in 2011 to confirm my competence as a practitioner. Alice and Ina May and the other amazing, dynamic, unstoppable women of that period in midwifery history were highly politicised and determined, and because of that determination, I and my classmates are able to become certified as CPMs, which is not something that could happen here in the US just a decade ago. And there are even more exciting times ahead for us midwives... I'm just glad to be around while it's all swirling around.
On Friday, we had a seminar on Internet research, specifically medical research, and then we trotted off home to begin our reading and preparation for the start of Normal Prenatal (promptly 9am this Monday). Terrifically exciting, even though that excitement is only a partial buffer for the bad news that it will cost me $2500 to fly back to Johannesburg this Christmas to spend three weeks with my friends, and P, and my family. Just no room in the budget for that... so I will indeed have to wait until May (as originally planned) to make my first trip back home. The realisation knocked the wind out of my sails on Friday evening, which was spent cuddling Julian-dog under the duvet while sniffling my way through a half-box of tissues.
On Saturday afternoon, after a morning of attempting (and failing) to concentrate on my textbooks long enough to get some work done, I and some of my sister-students attended a wedding at Narramissic Historic Farm on the outskirts of town. A lovely Birthwise graduate, who is now practising as an independent midwife, married her sweetheart in a pleasantly brief and beautiful ceremony enhanced by Gibran and Rilke and the Sufi poets, not to mention beautiful music (some by the groom himself, who is a singer/songwriter in his spare time) and abundantly joyful human connection. It was glorious, and the party afterward was a wonderful complement to that. A 1770s farmhouse restored to its original condition, haddock with goat's cheese and artichokes, a smiling bearded farmer-friend of the bride who baked great bread for the meal, mesclun greens with maple-dijon vinaigrette, organic wine, pumpkin-spice wedding cake, dancing in the barn under paper lanterns and fairy lights, children playing on a swing, unrestrained laughter, the bride a goddess in a simple ivory sheath and flower-wreath, a warm Fall evening and a sky full of stars... ah, wedding bliss got into my veins and my heart's still circulating that love around my body today.
I'm sending that love out as my Papa steps on a plane tomorrow to be with his ailing brother in Germany.
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