National Midwifery Week in the life of This Midwife
Friday
Catch a baby at 2:30 AM. Do the immediate postpartum care (including newborn exam, Vitamin K injection, see other kids introduced to new baby, start load of laundry and do paperwork). Leave house at 5:30.
Drive to a friend’s house for a quick couch-nap followed by pancakes and coffee.
Go home.
Quick pass at emails and paperwork.
Quick bed nap.
Lunch with a friend, meeting former clients in passing. Drive with friend to pick up two gorgeous school-aged kids that I caught as babies.
Home to more emails, phone calls and paperwork.
Evening with hubby
Saturday
Wake at 2:00 AM with a phone call from a worried mom. Calm her.
Realize that I am really awake. Get up and do computer work (website and blog).
Go back to bed at 5:00.
Wake up and go workout at the YWCA.
Breakfast, coffee and chess with hubby.
Homevisit for mom and new baby. Take photos of new baby.
Drive to a one year old’s birthday party. Visit with friends and colleagues. Remember his labor and birth.
Deal with emails, texts and phone calls in driveway.
Drive home.
Deal with new website and new blog post. Play with photographs.
Have dinner with hubby. Watch some TV. Go to bed.
Sunday
Go to church.
Go home.
Deal with emails, text and phone calls (miscarriage? baby not pooping, baby sleeping a lot, need new birth control prescription called to pharmacy…)
Take a nap.
Pick up house. Roast a huge pan of beets and onions.
Have dinner with hubby and our boys.
Monday
Deal with emails.
Workout at the YMCA.
Go home. Quick breakfast with hubby.
See a couple of clients in the office for prenatal care.
Drive to a client’s house for a postpartum check (including jaundice evaluation, baby weight, nursing observation and refinement, birth certificate review and signing).
Deal with emails and texts in the driveway.
Drive back to office for client appointments including an IUD placement, prenatal appointments and blood drawing.
Home to dinner waiting with hubby and our boys (thank you!).
Tuesday
Wake up late, decide to skip the Y. Do some writing. Feel decadant.
Coffee and an egg with hubby.
Drive 45 mins to meet with other midwives for monthly meeting. Visit, kibitz, listen, learn, hug, leave.
Sat in parking lot: deal with emails, texts and phone calls, neatly write out a birth certificate.
Drive an hour to a postpartum home visit (jaundice and weight check, NYS Newborn Screen done, nursing observed and refined, phlebitis checked for and ed done).
Drive 40 minutes to the next postpartum homevisit (2 weeks, parents are now old hats at this, baby looks so different!).
Talk with my sister in Michigan about getting hospice set up for our great uncle. Wish we all were closer.
Drive home, tired but happy. Talk with my daughter in Canada, congratulate her on surviving her first day on the new job. Wish we all were closer.
Home to hubby and Flying Chicken dinner waiting. Yes!
Congratulate youngest on getting a job and being awarded extra scholarship money.
Deal with emails, phone calls, scanning stuff that came in the mail, make out deposit slip. Do electronic charting.
Happily watch The Good Wife with my good husband.
Talk with my mother in Missouri. Wish we all were closer.
Wednesday
Blessed day! Wake up. Write. Deal with emails.
Work out at the YMCA.
Make a quick road breakfast (roasted beet and herbed cream cheese sandwich).
Get acupuncture treatment. Ah!
Refer a client for Traditional Chinese Medicine consult.
Drive to office.
Get a massage. Ah!
Go home.
Phone conference.
Deal with computer stuff (emails, charting, website, writing, photos, blog). Deal with texts, lab reviewing, phone calls…
Decide to skip Evening Prayer and Potluck at church.
Dinner with hubby.
Thursday
Wake up. Write. Deal with emails.
Go to the YMCA.
Home. Grab breakfast.
Go to office. See a couple of clients. Do paperwork, clean up some charts.
Meet my friend and assistant, go together on two prenatal homevisits.
Deal with emails including stuff for NYSALM and Pregnancy Project. Deal with texts and phone calls. Reschedule our third prenatal homevisit (the family was having a crazy day).
Home to hubby, dinner, some foot rubbing and debate watching.
Friday
Wake up. Deal with emails.
Go to the YMCA.
Come home. Share scrambled egg lettuce wraps and coffee with the hubby.
Drive to a prenatal home visit and drop off a labor tub.
Deal with emails, texts and lab results while sitting in their driveway.
Drive to drop off a birth certificate. Give the Town Clerk an inservice on filing birth certificates and the role of the modern midwife.
Do a postpartum (1 week) visit. Mom, baby and whole family are fabulous!
On leaving, hear that my great uncle has passed.
Stop and do a GYN homevisit.
Drive to next town clerk. Get signed birth certificate from protected pouch in my backseat. Find that it is all smeared, no idea how. Rewrite birth certificate.
Drive to visit parents for their signatures, have wonderful heartfelt visit with them thanks to the ruined (now rewritten) birth certificate.
Deal with emails in driveway.
Visit Trader Joe’s.
Drive home. Unload groceries.
Congratulate eldest son on getting a job.
Go to Carmen’s with hubby. Enjoy blues, bowl of black bean soup.
Toast the week with a glass of sangria.
Totals:
1 baby
2 Birth Certificates
6 Postpartum home visits
3 Prenatal homevisits
1 GYN homevisit
631 Miles driven to serve clients
5 Counties visited to serve clients (Rensselaer, Albany, Saratoga, Washington, Columbia)
9 Towns visited to serve clients (Troy, Argyle, Greenwich, Saratoga Springs, Catskill, Balston Spa, Albany, Guilderland, Feurebush)
Various Office Visits (both GYN and prenatal)
Numerous emails, phone calls and text
Moments of intense career satisfaction? Too many to count.
~Michelle