From Student to Midwife Part 6: A Taste of the Work Place

 Grainy photo of me all excited to be in my new uniform!

Hello lovelies! I am so happy to finally be catching you all up on my journey through midwifery. It's been an insane semester and I have taken on a bit of extra stuff at uni, as well as having some pretty tough stuff in my personal life to deal with over the past couple of months, so excuse my absence! I never said I would be anything other than sporadic with updating the blog while doing midwifery, and I'm trying, I swear!

So, there are two incredibly exciting things that have happened this semester and they go something like this:

1. Myself and one of my uni friends have started a Midwifery Society at uni

and...

2. I started antenatal placement at a local hospital!!!

So, let's start with the Midwifery Society, shall we? Basically it's a student association specific to midwifery students and funded by our overarching student services association. It's exciting because it's enabled us to do a heap of really cool and fun things for our fellow students, such as movie nights, group study sessions, subsidising attendance at conferences, charity work and we have even linked in with the local beauty school to offer Midwifery Society members $10 treatments as a part of our self care philosophy. We are also having an information session on placenta encapsulation in a couple of weeks' time, which I'm super excited about! Would you consider consuming your placenta in the form of hormone and iron rich tablets after birth? We have one really big project in the pipeline, too - a full-day conference for International Day of the Midwife 2016 on May 5th next year. We have some incredible, world-class speakers lined up and although I feel like it's incredibly hard work at times, it's so validating when fellow students and staff tell you how excited they are for the conference and even the smaller events we put on! Makes all the time and effort so worthwhile!

So, on to placement! You guys have no idea how exciting it was fr me walking into antenatal clinic on my first day there! It was a crazy, busy day and I honestly felt like crying at the end of the day - mixed tears of joy and tears of being completely overwhelmed and upset at the fragmented care system we have in Australia. I wanted so badly to give the women the time and the holistic care they deserved, like we are taught at uni, but it's so hard to do that in the 20 minute time slot the hospital allocates each woman! I was also frustrated that due to being in a complex care clinic, I didn't get to do anything hands-on. The midwife said it would have been inappropriate for an inexperienced first year to practice skills on a complex care woman. My second day in the clinic was about ten thousand times better than my first. It was a breezy day of three booking-in visits and a little bit of time in the antenatal assessment clinic. I was on with a different midwife this time and she had so much confidence in me as a student! It was the best day of my life so far! I basically did all of the hands-on stuff in the first two appointments, while the midwife double checked me and filled out the miles of paperwork involved, then she let me run the third appointment myself! She was a great teacher - eager to pass on her knowledge, approachable, friendly and she made me and the couples we saw feel really at home with her, which is so important in midwifery! She was so confident in my abilities and she was full of praise for me throughout the day, which was really great! She gave me honest, constructive criticism when I needed it and I left on a total high, feeling like my career path had been validated by the experience. It was great! Now I just have my two continuity partnerships to get me through until birth suite at the end of October. Can you believe that in less than two months, I will be seeing a baby be born? It's so exciting! I feel so blessed to be on this path!

From Student to Midwife Part 5: One Year In

 How to unwind after a long day full of lessons in personal development and midwifery practice.

Ladies and gentlemen, can you believe I am already one full year in to my midwifery studies? I hope the next two and a half years go just as quickly, because I can't wait to not be a student anymore. As much as I love learning, I think I'd take like a duck to water to not being broke.

This semester has been an incredibly interesting one. It's reinforced my love for midwifery through my introduction to two midwifery units. It's challenged my perceptions of what midwifery is and opened my mind to different perspectives and career paths. It's been a journey of self-development, as I'm assured the rest of the degree is, and it's been exhausting and rewarding all at once. I've done well this semester, with two Distinctions and a Credit as my overall marks in the three units I've taken (if I've calculated correctly. Final grades aren't released yet!) and I've really enjoyed my learning. In Midwifery Foundations, I have learned what it is to be "with-woman" and started to discover the kind of practice I want to develop and in Primary Health Care Midwifery I've begun to develop the practical skills I will need next semester on prac. Right now, with exams far behind me, I am just really looking forward to the next semester's studies! I'm trying not to will my holidays away too much though, and hope to get some creative projects done and books read in the meantime. My head is so full with the lessons I've learned this semester, and yet I have nothing else to say! Complex weavings of thoughts on birth, and on midwifery practice will have to wait until next time. For now, I'm going to relax and binge watch some Netflix. Hope you all have a lovely day!

Being an Advocate for Change

Something I'm hearing a lot lately at uni is how important it is to be an advocate for change.

Midwifery is a profession which is experiencing rapid developments at the moment, as birth is slowly returned to "normalcy" and attitudes surrounding birth are shifting away from the medical model and into the midwifery model. The benefits of less intervention, a quiet, dimly lit home-like (or home) environment, immediate skin to skin contact and delayed cord clamping, to name just a few things, are better known than ever, and thus the benefits of one-to-one care by a midwife, rather than an obstetrician, or obstetrical team, are coming into the spotlight, and midwifery is becoming a profession in its own right again! 

I'm really lucky to go to one of the only universities in Australia that offers a direct-entry Bachelor of Midwifery, with a strong, woman-centred focus and a curriculum which supports and encourages continuity of care between women and midwives throughout the ante-natal, peri-natal and post-natal periods. I count my lucky stars every day to be a part of such a degree, run by such enthusiastic, knowledgable and experienced midwifery academics. Being a young, childless, fresh-faced, enthusiastic first-year student, my eyes are really being opened to the disparity between evidence and practice in the hospital setting when it comes to maternity care, and I have no doubt that my opinion of what constitutes "good" midwifery practice will only grow as my degree, and indeed my career, goes on. 

Right now, what is really resonating with me is the lack of choice Australian mothers have over where they give birth. Many mothers probably don't even realise that they do indeed have a choice over where they give birth. They are simply sent from their GP straight to the hospital! So, I did what anyone with dreams of a career as a home birthing midwife would do and sent a letter to my local health district to ask that Medicare funded home birth be considered as an extension of the Lismore Community Midwifery Service, which delivers in-home antenatal and postnatal care to low-risk women in the Lismore area, and guess what? I actually got a reply!

So there you go - if you want to see change, be the change! This might not seems like much to some, but it's a start! We might even get the funding by the time I finish my degree - how cool would that be?

From Student to Midwife Part 4: First week in Midwifery Units

Beautiful post-cesarean photo of mum and bub

Hello all!
Lately I have been thinking about this little blog and have been itching to get back to writing again. As always, I've been thinking about the direction this blog is taking and I'm pleased to say that as of right now, you'll be getting a lot more midwifery information from me along with this little "diary" of my studies. Of course you will also be getting the odd personal or "lifestyle" post as well, but that part of my life is almost non-existent right now compared to the midwifery stuff, so you'll have to bear with me there a little bit! It's funny, isn't it? When I named this blog Little Foal I had no idea I'd ed up studying midwifery, or writing about it for that matter, but the name sort of fits, doesn't it?

Midwifery is one of the most rich, fulfilling things to study. It fills your soul and enriches your life. There is no one in the world as privileged as the midwife, for she is able to witness those very first, sacred moments of life. I feel very blessed to be equipping myself for a future in such a wonderful profession. I truly think there is no better job in the world, even if the study is gruelling and occupies all of my time!

Last semester was a stressful one, but I pulled through in the end. Where I last left you, I'd just finished my first round of assessments for Summer Session and was a little bit worried over how I would go with the tough anatomy and physiology subjects that I had to study for over the Christmas break. Well, I am pleased to tell you I actually ended up with a Credit in anatomy as well as my research subject, and scraped a pass in physiology as well! You wouldn't believe how relieved I was when I found out!

This week is my second week studying at the Gold Coast campus, and I'm so elated to finally be studying midwifery-specific units! This semester I'm taking Primary Health Care Midwifery, Midwifery Foundations and The Australian Health Care System. These units are designed to ready me for the practical placements I'll do next semester, and I'm really enjoying them so far! Midwifery has such an interesting history, and is a profession which is changing rapidly and asserting itself as a stand-alone profession in it's own right again after many years of being considered "subordinate" to nursing here in Australia. To be educated on these changes, and a part of the changes myself as a student and future professional is really exciting! I really believe in women's right to choose their care provider and have access to the best care that suits them, especially case-loading and continuity models of care which we are taught about at university, and I really hope to be the change we need in Australia to deliver that to women, both in my capacity as a student right now and my future as a midwife.

Right now, my studies consist of a lot of background stuff about midwifery and how it fits into the Australian health care system, and as of next week I will start learning practical skills in the lab, ready for my practical placements next semester! I've also started putting together my documentation for my placements, including my police checks and immunisation records. At the moment, all of that feels a little overwhelming, but I'm sure that I'll be feeling more settled soon.

Socially, I've made a great group of friends already from my local area and we had our first meeting for our group assignment today. We are all from totally different backgrounds, but we get along brilliantly and are all so passionate about midwifery. It's really nice. I've never had this at uni before! Our whole school of midwifery is like one big family. The lecturers are absolutely fantastic, knowledgable and approachable women, the second and third year students are lovely and helpful and there is a real sense that we are all in this together. No competition, just a sisterhood of women (unfortunately there are no men in our cohort!) who all have a singular passion and goal of becoming the best midwives we can be. I feel so supported and safe in my degree, which is really lovely!

Anyway, that's all for now! I hope you're al well! I'll try and check in on all your blogs soon! xx

From Student To Midwife Part 3: Summer Semester

I honestly intended to post so much more than I have in the past few months, especially about my midwifery studies. The fact that I haven't attests to how crazy and busy this semester has been. In my last update, my first semester in the Bachelor of Midwifery had just drawn to a close and my marks had not yet been released. Turns out I got credits in Nutrition and Health and Indigenous Australian Peoples, and as expected, failed Human Physiology. Failing Physiology is something that I really couldn't help due to my health last semester, so I decided that rather than wait to sit it again next year, I'd get stuck in and do it while the content is still fresh in my mind, which meant putting off Pharmacology until the end of next year and doing Human Physiology, Systemic Anatomy and Research and Evidence Based Practice this semester instead. 

I had no idea what I was getting myself into signing on for three units this semester. Let me tell you, it has been CRAZY!!! Summer semesters, being optional, are a condensed semester in which you "breeze through" up to three topics in each subject per week. All the lectures are online and labs are three per week. The assessments are constant and intense. The exams are terrifying. The workload is ginourmous and leaves you with very little free time. When you do have free time, your brain is so full of big words, you just want to curl into the foetal position and watch mind numbing TV. Or cry. I alternated between both all semester. 

Despite the intensity, I've actually found classes this semester quite enjoyable. The practical aspects of anatomy have been so much fun - we have done quite a few dissections and I enjoy working with the models until those dreaded things appear in the exams! The above photo was taken as I attempted to study in the revision lab. I was alone and bored and found myself playing with the body parts more than studying them. I've also made a few friends this semester, who are nursing students, which means that while I won't have any classes with them in the future, I've really enjoyed their company (and having people to study with) for the past few months. Also, because they're local, they are friendships that might just last!

Today I finished my first round of assessments/exams for the semester, just in time for my 21st party tomorrow night. My last exam was for anatomy and was a 50 question practical test on models. It was so intense and I walked away from it trembling a little because I found it so hard - I was not very well prepared! The good news is that I passed my midsession physiology exam though, which puts me in a very good position going into the final exam week on the 23rd of January! Between now and then, I don't have any more classes, but I do need to dedicate time for study, as I need every mark I can muster in those final exams and also have a research report due on the 5th, leaving little time for leisure following Christmas!

I still can't wait for this semester to be properly over. It's been a long 10 weeks and still four more to go! I'm really, really looking forward to starting classes at the Gold Coast campus next semester, where my subjects will all have a strong midwifery focus.

Book Review// Baby Catcher by Peggy Vincent

It's been a few weeks now since I read this book, and it since has been borrowed by a friend, but the passionate stories within have imprinted on my mind as if put there by a branding iron! Peggy Vincent's captivating storytelling combines with a seemingly never-ending supply of interesting life experiences to make this book a quick and pleasant read - one that I finished in a single afternoon on account of walking around with it glued to my nose, unable to put it down. 

You may have guessed by the title that Peggy Vincent is a midwife, but she is not just any midwife - she is one of the pioneering midwives of America's recent natural birthing movement, and this book is a series of short stories which capture beautifully her career. It talks not just of beautiful home births, but also the challenges that faced midwives in the early days, battles against obstetricians and hospital policy, the challenges of setting up a birth centre, legal problems and birth complications, all done in a captivating way. 

It is a book that has reinvigorated the passion within me for natural childbirth. It has lifted my spirits in a time of struggling with university, despairing my choice to switch degrees into midwifery, and restored my faith that being a midwife is my calling. It awakened me to the stark differences between Australian and American birthing practices, and it left me swelling with pride for the profession that I have chosen to enter into. Having said all this, I do not think this book's magic is reserved for midwives or midwives-to-be. I think that anyone who loves a bit of riveting adventure would love this book, especially if you happen to enjoy non-fiction and be even just slightly partial to medical dramas (who isn't, amiright?). 

All-in-all, it is a compelling light read and I cannot sing it's praises enough. Amidst all the heavy medical textbooks and terminology I'm forced into reading for university, I really enjoyed this little reminder of what midwifery is all about and the magic of childbirth! 

From Student to Midwife: Part 2 - Reflection on my First Semester

So, last week was a little quiet on the blog because I had exams. Incredibly hard exams. My first exams for my midwifery degree. In the above picture, I am procrastinating on the day before my physiology exam, with a terrible head cold and wearing a smile to mask the cold lump of fear in the pit of my stomach. As I've mentioned before, I've found this semester quite difficult. Going from an Arts degree to a Health degree is a huge transition, and so I'm a little out of practice with exams, having spent the past year and a half writing essays instead.

I found out last week that I have passed one of my subjects, however our marks aren't officially released for another couple of weeks yet. I'm fairly confident that I also passed nutrition, and fairly convinced that I failed physiology and will have to repeat it next year.

Right now, I have a few blissful weeks off before starting Summer Semester, which I opted to do this year to speed up my degree a little. It starts on the 20th of October, and I'll be doing Anatomy, Research and Evidence Based Practice and Pharmacology, the last of my generic health units before I start my midwifery units in February next year. Apparently Anatomy involves some viewing of cadavers, which both repulses me on one level and has my inner freaky, science nerd screaming "COOL!"

While I haven't enjoyed this semester quite as much as I was hoping, I have learned a lot and I'm one step closer to achieving my goal of becoming a midwife. I'm looking forward to a few weeks break and getting through a little more of my extracurricular reading about midwifery in the meantime. One semester down, seven more to go!

Book Review// Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin

For months and months, one name has been bubbling at the back of my mind. It's dropped into lectures, tutorials, midwifery blogs and conversations between peers. Ina May Gaskin - the mother of the natural birth movement. 

When you're a midwifery student, birth is on your mind 24/7. Every full moon, I look up at the sky and wonder how many babies are being born at the time. I see pregnant people everywhere, and I'm always itching to ask them about their pregnancy and birth plan. If I see a new mother, I immediately want to know what their baby weighs, how old it is and hear her birth story in excruciating detail. With my first semester as a student midwife drawing to a close, and exams and assessments stressing me out, I found myself wondering why am I doing this to myself? I turned to Clemmie Hooper, the writer of my favourite midwifery blog, Gas and Air, on twitter to ask which Ina May Gaskin book she would recommend to a student midwife, desperate to reignite her passion for caring for women in the midst of stressful physiology and nutrition exam prep. The answer - Spiritual Midwifery.

The book opens with a collection of beautiful, natural birth stories in which Ina May and her gang are finding their way as midwives and the mothers are made to feel empowered and beautiful throughout their birth. For Ina May and the Farm midwives and the women they serve, giving birth really is a spiritual experience. They are without fear and they ride their "surges" like a surfer rides a wave, finding their own unique ways to deal with the intensity of birth and help their bodies open up to bring a baby into the world. I was totally in awe of every single woman in this book! Never have I read such a massive collection of birth stories which are so positive about the experience and so natural in happening! 

The second part of the book talks in detail about midwifery practice, with more demonstrative birth stories along the way. Of course, as with reality, there are not always happy endings, but the statistics at the back of the book show a remarkable disparity between the birth statistics on The Farm, which show an overwhelming majority of natural births and extremely low intervention rate, and the rest of America.

I could not put Spiritual Midwifery down and I know it will be a valuable tool in my career. While reading my copy of the book, I envisioned creating a little "library slip" for the inside cover and lending it out to friends, family and colleagues over the years. Already it has made it's way to Yamba for one of my fellow midwifery students and good friends to read on her holiday. 

This book really opened my eyes to the magic of birth, and the power of the experience. While some bits were sort of hippy-dippy, overall, I absolutely loved it. The pages are interspersed with beautiful black and white photographs of happy families and women in birth, and gorgeous, symbolic illustrations are peppered throughout. It was both informative and entertaining, and I would recommend Spiritual Midwifery as a MUST READ to all expectant mothers, midwives and midwifery students, and as an interesting read to anyone who enjoys a good birth story!

From Student to Midwife: Part 1

What's in my bag: Student Midwife Edition

Considering the overwhelming amount of support I received from the blogging community when I decided to switch university degrees, I thought it might be fun to keep you all updated on how my midwifery studies progress. It's week 11 of my first semester right now, and I must say, I was quick to learn this degree would not be a walk in the park!

To become a midwife, as well as learning actual midwifery skills such as birthing techniques, how to check blood pressure, how babies develop etc. you also need a lot of foundation knowledge, which is what I am tackling in this semester and over summer semester. This semester I am taking Health and Indigenous Australian Peoples, which is a subject about cultural awareness in health care, Food and Nutrition in Health, and Human Physiology, and boy are those last two hard! Human Physiology covers such a ginormous amount of content that I am kind of struggling to keep up, and Food and Nutrition in Health is a lot more complex than I thought it would be.

As a part of Food and Nutrition in Health, we are keeping short food diaries and creating basic individual diet plans for ourselves to see if we are meeting our individual dietary needs. As someone who struggles with their appetite and has various food restrictions due to health problems, I've found it interesting and challenging so far! The food intake study is my main assessment for this class, so it will be interesting to see how I go with the theoretical stuff that goes along with it!

As for Human Physiology, well so far I have only had an online test which I passed (thank god!). I was supposed to do a closed book exam in week 8, but I was ill and so sat it last week instead. I'm incredible nervous over it, because by all accounts, it was terribly difficult!  As much as I love learning about the human body, I am looking forward to being finished with my foundation subjects and moving onto midwifery practice subjects next year!

Big Decisions and not letting things stand in your way

For the past two years, I have been trying to convince myself that I want to be an English and History teacher. After my HSC results came in, I realized that all the time I had off school sick over the year had severely affected my marks and I would not be getting into any medicine or pre-med courses. I was a little bit heartbroken, but had been expecting it and knew it was for the better. 

The hunt was on for a new career, and I had only a few short weeks to make a decision on what I was to do for the rest of my life. My marks for English and History had been really, really good and I enjoyed the subjects so much, but ever since I was a little girl I had wanted to be a doctor and I still had a real fascination with the medical world. My two conflicting interests were tearing me different ways and the two career paths I decided between were teaching and midwifery. The appeal of 10 weeks holidays a year and good hours tore me away from the medical profession I'd so long desired and I chose teaching. 

I've now been studying literature, history and cultural studies for a year and a half, and while last year I enjoyed my studies immensely, changing to a new university this year has made me reconsider my career choice. I began to realize that I cannot picture myself standing up in front of a classroom for the rest of my life, and that I'm not challenged by the course work (a good thing for some but apparently I'm a weirdo who likes things to be hard?). 

So, after a few months of thinking, research and countless episodes watched of The Midwives and One Born Every Minute (they seriously need to make some Aussie midwife shows!) I have finally decided to change to midwifery! I put in my application yesterday and have already been accepted into nursing (which was my second choice and has the exact same first year subjects as midwifery) to start next semester! I have to wait to see what my marks are this semester before I find out if I also got into the Bachelor of Midwifery but I'm super excited anyway because I know I'm going to be able to do it whether I need to transfer again from nursing or not!

A big part of the reason I have spent 2 years trying to convince myself to be a teacher is my health. Even now, my close family and friends are concerned with how I will cope with night shifts and such physical work with lupus but I had to take the chance and make this decision. I may have lupus, but why should I let it control such an important decision in my life? I may not ever be able to work full time in my profession due to my illness, but the same goes for teaching as well. On the other hand, I could go into remission in a few years and if I hadn't taken this chance, I could really regret not following my dreams. 

I can't think of anything more magical than helping to bring new life into the world everyday as a profession. Being a midwife would be more than just a job to me. It would be a privilege to help women bring their babies safely earth side and I am very excited for my new career path!