AmazonMidwife

We've been fighting Influenza B (the less potent one) chez amazonmidwife. Patient 0, aka the 'Savant, brought it home from work early last week. Though he fought the good fight, he finally succumbed to viral conjunctivitis last weekend. I had him wearing warm chamomile teabags with colloidal silver for relief, as well as using some homeopathic eyedrops all weekend. He still had to go to the doctor, who seconded my diagnosis, to get a work excuse on Monday, but he was over the worst part and soldiered back to work Tues.

The Boy became Patient 1 early Saturday afternoon , presenting with a fever and malaise. (I know he's sick when he stops talking.) I was sanguine until he started complaining about his neck hurting, so I put a call in to our wonderful ped, who talked me down from thinking the Boy had developed viral meningitis as a complication and persuaded me to give him some acetaminophen. (I rarely use the stuff; fevers have a purpose in my world view. However, there is also something to be said for letting the body rest to heal as well.) He had recovered some spark by Saturday evening, but did have several bouts of night terrors, which confused me a bit, since they occurred after I had re-dosed him at bedtime. The jury is still out on acetaminophen here.

The night terrors caused me to bring him into our bed again, and I didn't get great sleep. (I knew I was playing with fire, but figured that I had developed some immunity after sleeping with the 'Savant all week.) Nonetheless, I started my offensive armed with Emergen-C, Oscillococcinum and colloidal silver, dosing myself and the Girl. I was heavily invested in staying well, since I had a repeat mama due, and didn't want to miss her birth.

The offensive worked pretty well; the Girl has been fine, but I was feeling a little punk on Tuesday, being aware of a slight swelling of my neck lymph nodes. Sleeping in that AM seemed to have provided enough reinforcements to be feeling better by the evening. (Yes, the military metaphors, though not my strong suit, are deliberate. Deal.)

However, I got cocky yesterday. After my busy day, the mama went into labor. She had a beautiful birth, but I didn't get home until 3 this AM. Instead of resting the weary troops, I decided to press on and bake some cupcakes for the commercial and fete the Girl was having for French class today. (They've been working for the last six weeks on a food unit, creating and translating a menu, talking about French restaurants, creating and translating a script for the commercial---all of this leading up to today's culmination.) All the kids were into the idea of gooey French desserts, but the Girl's creativity involved patisserie chocolat et caramel seupeudsee avec suesedare arc en ciel (chocolate cupcakes, iced with chocolate and caramel, topped with rainbow sprinkles for the philistines among us, or those who can't read French without the accents.)

I knew that I'd be less likely to want to get up to make them, and I thought it would be a great way to work off the post-birth adrenalin buzz. I also thought I'd actually get more sleep that way, not having the task looming over me while I slept. But I succumbed to temptation, actually tasting what I was making, even knowing that sugar is Benedict Arnold, if not the devil. And I vastly underestimated the time it would take for making and clean up said patisseries and only ended up with 3.5 hours sleep. Call me Colonel Custer.

So, by the time I got everyone home from their activities this afternoon, my body was in full retreat mode; I was exhausted with a raging sore throat. I went immediately to bed at 5:00, while the 'Savant took my post and went fabric shopping for tomorrow's history class craft (carp kites) and food shopping for the teriyaki recipe that goes with the lesson. (medieval Japan---not to be confused with the girls' 17th century Japan unit recently mentioned.)

But I, like Patton, have not yet begun to fight, 'cause I have too much to do to surrender to the 'flu: history class tomorrow, prepping for the first O.W.L. class, teaching that on Sunday, as well as doing a 3 day visit to the new mom and baby, the girls' history class on Monday, Mama Dee coming down etc. etc. So I have brought out the big guns. No, not antibiotics...those are nuclear weapons. These are the heavy artillery, the psych ops troops....soft-boiled eggs.

(Okay, those of you who do not like liquid egg yolks should stop reading now. Nothing I say will convince you of my worldview if loose eggs repel you.)

But when I was amazonchild, my mama inculcated me in the healing powers of soft-boiled eggs. When I was nauseous or had vomited, she had a carefully prescribed regimen of treatment: clear fluids (usually 7-Up, which I would never give my kids now) sipped slowly, a teaspoonful every 5 minutes for a few hours, or whenever I woke up, then milky tea, again sipped slowly. If that stayed down, we moved up to toast, dipped in the milky tea. Next came the soft-boiled eggs---the harbinger that told me I was on the mend.

But she didn't just use them for stomach upsets; they slipped softly down a sore throat, didn't have to be chewed when I had the mumps etc. Soft-boiled eggs are the reminder that This Too Shall Pass, and Things Will Be Better In The Morning---the ultimate comfort food for illness of any sort.

Now that I have to prepare them myself, with all the accompanying burnt and messy fingers, fishing out of bits of shell, I appreciate the love in those childhood bowls all the more. So after making and ingesting this potent medicine, I am going back to sleep now, to wake up well, or at the least, well in mind resigning myself to some self-care induced cancellations, but preferably, well.

Got a call from Sharon-Heron Friday night. She was reveling in the recent plethora of snow days CPS has mandated lately. She said that she felt sorry for the kids, since, as homeschoolers, they would never know the joy of snow days. But why on earth would one need a snow day when one can learn subjects (like French) by watching this?:

Yeah, it's a bit long, but worth it.

It's been a BIG week, so I am napping in lieu of blogging. Once I'm rested I'll tell you all about it.

Alright, now that I'm back on call and the whirl of gaiety is finished, leaving me time to blog. And what a whirl it was:

*Monday---I had 15 kids (aged 5-13) and one dad sitting fairly quietly on my dining room floor for a nearly 2 hour Japanese tea ceremony that the moms and I did our best to recreate from our 16th century Japanese history unit. The kids behaved so well, even the boy, that I never would have realized how long they sat unless one of the moms hadn't mentioned it. We served a 6 course meal: rice and salad, soup (called the Nimono course), grilled fish and/or spring rolls for our vegans (the Yakimono course), cups of hot lemon water as a palate cleanser (Hasiarai), a 'mountain' and the 'sea' on a tray---the Hassun course, which we made from strawberry oat bars that one of the moms made, and blueberries. (maybe not so culturally accurate, but good!) The final food course was pickles and more rice (in case anyone was still hungry, I'm thinking). We finished up by passing a bowl of jasmine tea (koicha) around for everyone to smell and to taste if they wanted to, then gave them cups of green tea (usucha) for the end. I'm not sure the kids would recognize a true tea ceremony after experiencing ours, just like the Kitaro music I had found at the library the day before to play during the ceremony didn't do justice to classical Japanese music. But they sat so well I know that they absorbed something.
After they went home, I went in to the office that evening to teach a class on breastfeeding.

*Tuesday---We started out the day by driving through the snow to go to piano lessons. ( I now get to experience and appreciate what my mother did during all those years she sat through my piano lessons. I hope that she enjoyed watching and listening to me as much as I do watching the kids.)

Yep, amazonmidwife is 'off call' this week. "What does that mean?", you query. Well, it means that none of my clients are between 37 weeks gestation and birth. It doesn't happen very often (2-3x/yearly) since our practice doesn't rotate being on call. Once a client commits to me and one of my partners (we always work in pairs, and often have an apprentice along as well), we commit to her as well. Long before I was going to births, the older midwives tried rotating call shifts, but they found that they were saying to each other, "If so and so goes into labor, just call me...I don't want to miss her birth" so much, that there was really no point in a call rotation. I also wouldn't want it any other way; it'd be like running a marathon, then handing off the baton in sight of the finish line.

"Okay, but what's the big deal in being 'off-call'?" Well, for me it means the following:

*I can wear essential oils/perfume-y lotion etc. (Mamas in labor get scent-aversive very easily, and I don't always have time to shower before I have to head out the door.) I'm not big on make-up, but I love scents and not being able to wear them all the time sometimes feels like the biggest job-related sacrifice, which sounds silly, compared with what else midwives deal with all the time.

*I can drink a glass of wine or beer with or after dinner. ( Refraining from one glass isn't because I worry about being impaired or unable to drive; it related to the scent-aversion I mentioned above.) Mamas laboring naturally secrete endorphins and enkephalins that are 100x more potent than morphine; sometimes they want or need me really close to help coach them, esp. when I'm modeling blowing through their pushing urges if their perineum needs to stretch or I'm trying to resolve a cord around the baby's neck or suction. The last thing they need , IMLTHO, at that time is to smell my after-dinner wine.

* I can drink several glasses of alcohol, even split a couple of bottles with friends as I did yesterday when Alissa and her family came over to spend the afternoon. We had a wonderful time talking, laughing, knitting, eating split pea soup. And the kids played so well together---we didn't have to threaten to lock them in the basement at all; they were outside building a fort with pine tree branches most of the time anyway. I imagine we would have had the same good time without the alcohol, but she brought some blackberry wine that we mixed with some cheap champagne (that doesn't give me headaches!) which tasted great. We also opened a bottle of my nephew-in-law's homebrewed white wine that he had made for his and my niece's wedding two years ago. He had fermented it in oak casks and it had aged beautifully; he has a gift. It was a great way to spend the day, and of course, impossible to do when on call.

*I can stay up late without worrying that I could be called 20 minutes after I finally go to bed. (Lots of mamas can only relax enough to go into labor when their kids are asleep.) And I can really sleep! when I do go to bed instead of my mind spinning weird (or precognitive) dreams all night.

*I can go to bed without mentally going over tomorrow's schedule and planning what would have to be cancelled, who would have to be called, whether the 'savant can work from home and take care of the kids if I get a call.

All this may sound like I'm complaining. I'm not. As Peggy Vincent said in Babycatcher (paraphasing) "who wouldn't want to be a midwife? We get to ask people intimate details about their lives, drink champagne at all hours, and catch delicious, wonderful babies!" But the time spent, at least mentally, 'in the green room waiting to go onstage' can get a bit wearisome. So when these lovely breaks come, I enjoy them, and I'm just that much more ready to be on call when it's time.

My excuse is that I just got home from a birth, (yep, the one that the mom thought would happen two weeks ago...and it was like butta, baby) But I am tired, now that the adrenalin has left, so when I read Alissa's latest entry, I just had to try it too. I'm not as good as she is at formatting, and the quiz is sponsored by Upper Room Ministries, so it doesn't give code to paste into one's blog. (perhaps intentionally, since that cause people to use it frivolously.) But here goes what I have:

You are a Sage, characterized by a thinking or head spirituality. You value responsibility, logic, and order. Maybe that's why you were voted "Most Dependable" by your high school classmates. Structure and organization are important to you. What would the world be like without you? Chaos, that's what! Your favorite words include should, ought, and be prepared. What makes you feel warm and fuzzy? Like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof it's tradition! tradition! tradition!

Mr. Spock | Dilbert | Elrond
Dietrich Bonhoeffer | Maya Angelou | Linus (Peanuts)
Yoda (Star Wars) | Andy Griffith | Mr. Miyagi
The Buddha | Rodin's The Thinker | Moses
Ross Geller | Matthew (the Gospel writer) | Tiger Woods

You can take the quiz here.

I am especially interested to hear how Mama Dee and Scooter score. I predict lover and mystic respectively.