Long time gone...

Hey, nice to see ya! Where've you been?!  Oh, wait, I guess maybe it's where I been, eh?

So, needless to say, this post is loooooong overdue.  I think this blog's last posting was somewhere around, oh, six months ago?  Huh.  I guess it's been a busy half-year.  Since our last rendevous, old friend, I've packed up and picked up everything to move half a days drive away, officially gaining entry into the world of a practicing (and paid!!!) nurse-midwife, and gloriously helped a powerful mama pull her newest into her arms, standing alongside her bed... (my first out-of-bed birth - woohoo!). I've said goodbye to so many friends --- and in a heartbreaking moment that doesn't end, to my baby brother, standing alongside each of my family members as we realize the swiftness with which goodbye can be missed; I've lain awake at night and struggled with my own internal guilt, fears, remorse, anxieties - both professional and personal.  I worry about meeting the expectations of my clinic administrators, meeting the needs of my clients, about being thorough yet not over-ordering or falling behind; I fret about when the golden hospital privileges will finally be mine, how stressed my partners are in the meantime while they await that day and how tiring it must be to have to back me up until then.

And, of course - I yawn, I drag, I sleep only halfway 98% of the time, hoping/not hoping my pager will go off... if it does, if that next mama's water finally breaks, it will be one more babe closer to independent privileges and a bit of relief for everyone all around (but if it doesn't, of course, it means a bit more sleep for everyone on the home front.) Officially, I'm on call something like four nights a week - but unofficially I've been sleeping with my pager under my pillow just about 24/7 since starting in April - or at least since getting permission to get near hospital patients a month or two ago. It doesn't beep at me often ... yet I still dream that it does, or that it did and I slept through it, or that the batteries died and someone's been frantically trying to find me, yadda yadda....

Oh, but the catches - the sweet, slippery, lovely babes!  (Really, isn't that what it's all about??) When it's down to that moment, the rest of the stress, the worrying, the anxiety melts away.  Until, that is, the hemorrhaging afterwards... or the placenta sticks... or mama passes out later on.... you know, those sorts of things....  But the catch itself, usually, is a rush!
 
I pledge, from this point forward, to stay more loyal to this blog.And I hope you'll stay here, too.  Like any good things, any journey worth taking, it may be a long road, but hopefully worth the travel....

My "birthingway" necklace ... or "mamalove" necklace... or "I Catch" necklace" ... or ??? 
(I'm open to suggestions!) ... for every babe, a bead <3