May 8th - Knit One, Birth One

Midwives are no longer allowed to bring placentas into classrooms to show students - I have absolutely no idea why.

Now they bring felted/knitted versions.

They're really fucking weird, like a vascular Tam O'Shanter.

The midwife who comes in is quite clearly the best lecturer we've had all course. The vast majority of the other have been proficient and pleasant, though some have slouched in their chairs and exited the building at such a rate it was hard to convince ourselves that they were in anyway interested in actually teaching.

This lady, however, was fabulous. Energetic, relaxed, funny, knowledgeable and honest. She was also fiercely pro-green suit, bigging us up at every opportunity - "I'm not going to insult you by telling you how to resuscitate people, you're paramedics".

The issue of absent midwives on the road raised its head repeatedly. Our lecturer was passionate about giving us the straight dope on pre-hospital obstetrics. Stingray was concerned, as we all were, and asked if, perhaps, the local GP could be called in to assist?

"GP?!" she exploded, "A bloody GP?! Don't even THINK about it! You are BETTER than GPs at delivering babies."

Cool. :)

She mentions a physiological phenomenon that presents just before birth - I've always known that a symptom of imminenf birth is "anal pouting" - but this lady introduced us to "anal winking" as well.

If I'd known that my obstetrics training would involve getting the come-on from a stranger's poopy pipe?

I may have reconsidered.

The lesson is intensive and fast, we all know how to handle a normal, healthy birth, so this is nothing but pathology, a rapid list of terrifying situations and the skills needed to manage them, her handheld slide advancer clicks like a panicked Geiger counter. Children are born backwards, with trailing limbs, toxic liqour in their lungs. Mothers' organs tear themselves apart, massively increased blood volumes pour into body cavities and down their legs. Our lecturer trips between being a health professional and an expert in the human angle of her skill.

"Women will clean themselves up before calling you, they'll wipe their legs down, they'll be embarassed. It won't look as bad as you might expect - there might not be any blood at all. But look at their toes.
There isn't a woman on this planet with the mental stability to scrub between her toes when she's scared she's bleeding to death."

We're taught to push twisted babies around inside the womb, to understand why handling a cord is a bad thing, to appreciate how the simplest gesture (like wiping shit off a baby's bum as it's born) can have devastating effects. We are interlopers in the most natural procedure on earth, frighteningly necessary, dramatically redundant.

She hands us a blank maternal record so we can be familiar with its layout, we now know enough to NEED to know the pregnancy's history. There's a box at the bottom - "If you have any cultural needs (dress, certain people to be present, ceremonies), please let your midwife know and we will accommodate you."

See if I was having a baby? I'd be writing in that box - "In my religion, people who are present at births must all be dressed as Imperial Stormtroopers."

It's maybe just as well I'm a man...