Midwife Moments

My midwife is hilarious. She is a large, German woman with a fierce kind of determination and mild ferocity. She appears to be a very good midwife (not that I would really know), but she has a good reputation and does seem to know what she's doing. She's obviously done some of those 'personal interaction' type courses because she gets a lot of the external positive signals right (like eye contact and smiling and so forth), but it is accompanied with such intensity and strength, and bluntness that it is quite disconcerting.

Some examples...


* She asked me whether we wanted to have the baby in the hospital. I said 'yes'. I was fairly strong about this. I've not wanted to have the baby anywhere else really. I'm fairly old-fashioned about pain. I don't like it and see no reason why I should embrace it or see it as a 'natural part of life' or anything. And I'm pessimistic. I see no reason why quite a few things shouldn't go wrong and I'd like a very clever, well-trained person on hand to do something about these things. And as these things are best resolved in hospital, I'd be quite happy to go there. But this was not satisfactory. The midwife told me to: "...go away and think about it some more". (In rather the same tone as you would send a small child to its room to 'think about what you've done'). So, I did think about it. And came to the same conclusion. Not just for the above mentioned clearly selfish reasons, but because as we live on the top floor of a building in which all the sound travels down, it would be profoundly unloving to give birth at home. So, I'm going to hospital for purely sacrificial reasons, and I'm allowed. The midwife is going to let me.


* She had a student (whom I felt so sorry for by the end of my visit), and the student was instructed to feel the baby and work out where the head was. The student couldn't feel the head and so said that it was too early to work out where the head was. The midwife said (to me, not the student): "The baby's head is pointing down." The student tentatively asked how she could be so sure. The midwife said, "Well, if I can feel its spine and hear its heartbeat in this position then its head must be pointing down; its the only logical conclusion. I don't need to feel its head to know where its head is". (Student became very quiet after this).


* Today was priceless. She sent me away from my last appointment with strict instructions to fill out the first page of my hospital notes. This I duly did. She then had a look at them today and turned to me and asked, "Is this your handwriting?" I nervously admitted to having written there. She looked at me as pleased as anything and said, "This is really good handwriting. It's very neat. You have excellent handwriting." This was said with an absolute beaming smile as though I'd just done something really rather remarkable.
I wasn't exactly sure how to react to this. It's been a long time since I was in Year 2 and I can't remember whether you're meant to ask for happy stamps or whether they are just given to you. (I didn't get one).

I rather like my midwife. She is always so certain, which gives me a lot of confidence. And one of these days I might just get a happy stamp. If I'm really good.