Right in Front of Me

I had a great week end! My sister-in-law who lives in NY decided to surprise her dad, so she flew in and arrived at the house on Sunday afternoon. It was good to see her and her best friend A., because I love those girls, even though I don't get to spend too much time with them, I have a blast every time I see them . I have always been a family type of girl, but with my side of the family being far from me I need these family reunions more than ever. We were all chatting about A being a med student. It is pretty amazing in fact, since she is 24 I believe and will be graduating next year as a doctor. Granted she still has to be an intern and then a resident for 3 years, but she'll be able to practice on her own at age 27! Pretty impressive.

We were asking her all sorts of questions about here rotations, which ones she liked and disliked, and we started talking about her OB rotation. She told us that during her rotation she had caught about 50 babies....that's a pretty big number. I was surprised though, at how A. described a birth. She never mentioned that she was amazed by seeing a baby coming to this world or even talked about how beautiful it must be to see a mom holding her child for the very first time.

She was explaining to us that she had to start every morning at 6am, that she could not leave until the last mom had given birth and that her thoughts after she had gone 2 hours past the time that she usually leaves the hospital, was "Come on....Get that baby out already! I just want to go home....." She was explaining how gross it was to have all the mom's bodily fluids coming out of her...How the mom was screaming to get the child out....and how hot and uncomfortable the clothes that she had to wear, with the mask and protection all over, were.

I understand that it is not everybody's dream to see births and attend women while they give birth. I also understand that it must have been shocking to be asked to catch a baby the first time she attended a birth, but I heard and saw that attitude of impatience that I was suspecting doctor have while waiting for a mom to give birth. I saw why doctors decide to give moms pitocin as soon as possible, because they know for a fact that otherwise, just like A., they'll have to be at the hospital until who knows what time.

This is the reason why I believe that women who are healthy should see a midwife...Somebody who is committed to births, somebody who knows that it will take hours and hours for the child to come and who is ok with that.

Pictures of Trip

As promised, here are some pictures from our camping trip:

Frankfort, Michigan.

Downtown Frankfort!

No comment!

On our way to Lake Michigan.

Amost there!

Louna Tanning by the lake Michigan

We found a trail to go off-roading and the sight of these trees was pretty amazing.

On Platte river.

Louna chilling by the bonfire.

A huge moth attached to a screen. Pretty amazing.

The sunset in Frankfort...beautiful!

Going Camping!

We are leaving this afternoon to go camping in the northern part of Michigan...I can't wait! The last time that we went camping was 2 years ago, so it's been a while. It was that time that we found our dear Basset Hound Louna. She was just crossing the street with no collar around her neck and nobody seemed to be looking for her...We told the park ranger that we had her in case somebody asked, but nobody came. I like to think that she was sent to us. We had been talking about adopting a dog a few months prior to finding her so the timing was perfect. She is a gift, she is the sweetest and most special dog ever (maybe because she is my first dog!)

This week end will be the first time that we go camping with her. I hope that she'll love it. I also hope that she won't puke in the car the whole way there...When we first found her, we couldn't go in the car for more than 3 minutes without her throwing up. I heard that some dogs have motion sickness, but I always thought that it was mainly the intense fear that we were taking her somewhere to abandon her that made her sick, and indeed as trips to dog parks became more frequent her puking almost stopped. But we have never driven for 4 hours with her in the car...We are planning on taking her to the park and making her tired before hitting the road...Hopefully that'll do it.

We are practically all packed up and really excited. Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures of our trip next week. Have a great week end!

Great Publicity for Midwives

Here is an article that I found on CNN:

Midwives delivering more babies

(AP) -- Instead of a conventional hospital birth, Heidi Teeple and her husband, Rod, brought baby Logan into the world while soaking together in a freestanding tub of warm water in their living room, with a fire in the fireplace and two midwives at their side.

"It was great," said Heidi Teeple, who lives in San Anselmo, California. "It was much more relaxing. There was no anxiety about when to go to the hospital. I called the midwives; they came. They were both very calm and soothing."

The Teeples are part of a small but growing contingent of people choosing to give birth with midwives, caregivers who view birth as a natural, rather than medical, experience, and one that should be tailored to a mother's needs.

The trend has been slow but steady in coming.

According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics for 2003, the most recent year for which data are available, 8 percent of pregnant women in the United States gave birth with a midwife compared with 4 percent in 1990. Births attended by a certified nurse midwife, for example, have risen every year since 1975.

Laws governing midwifery vary from state to state, as does insurance coverage of midwife-assisted births.

Generally, many insurers cover midwife care -- provided she is licensed according to state law and works in a hospital or approved birthing center. Not all midwives are certified nurses; those who aren't are sometimes referred to as lay midwives. Insurance coverage is spottier for those midwives who are not certified nurses, or who assist home birth or otherwise work outside the traditional hospital setting.

But choosing a midwife is about more than merely selecting a care provider or deciding between birth at a hospital or home. It represents a shift in how a woman approaches pregnancy, advocates say. Although certified nurse midwives are licensed to administer medication, they generally encourage a drug-free birth and rely primarily on natural methods of care.

At the core, it's a rejection of the quintessential birth scene: the pregnant woman lying in a single bed, a nurse at the ready with a pain-relieving epidural anesthetic and a hospital room full of people yelling "push!"

Still, with pregnancy and birth having some of the highest costs in medical care, families do need to consider whether a midwife's services will be covered.

WellPoint Inc., the nation's largest health insurer, said its coverage of midwifery varies by locality and health plan.

Aetna Inc. said it contracts with midwives who assist deliveries in hospitals or birthing centers but does not cover planned home births, except in New York and Washington or elsewhere in the world where law requires coverage. One of the insurer's global plans covered 80 percent of Heidi Teeple's pregnancy and birth, she said.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it covers both hospital and home births with a licensed midwife. Benefits are generally the same for a woman who chooses a physician and hospital as for a woman who prefers a midwife and home birth.

"If you are a consumer, you need to ask if there are midwives in a given market's network," spokesman Roger Rollman. "Some have midwives, and some do not."

In some parts of the country, access to midwife care has been hampered by the rising cost of malpractice insurance. In order to curb costs, some obstetric practices have laid off their midwives in order to save on overhead expenses.

Where midwives are available, the cost of a midwife-attended birth varies by place and practitioner.

"When we were first looking at the cost, it was a lot less to deliver with a midwife," said Christine Louden, a West Hartford, Connecticut, mother who had her two boys with midwives. "Cost didn't motivate our decision but we saw the cost and thought, 'Wow.' But the decision was definitely motivated by belief systems."

Couples who give birth with a midwife describe the experience with words like "soothing," "romantic" and "calm."

During her labor, the midwives "didn't say much at all," said Heidi Teeple, 31. "As it got closer, they made sure things were going right. It was very empowering to feel like I was doing it on my own."

In a separate conversation, Rod Teeple, who is 41, echoed his wife and said having the midwives there more than anything gave him confidence. He called Logan's birth "the most smooth, amazing experience," one that was "very private."

Some women say part of the draw of midwifery is the freedom to give birth wherever and however they choose.

Rachel Ledoux, a 27-year-old mother from Chicopee, Massachusetts, said she spent a good deal of her labor in the hospital room's shower -- with the midwife periodically getting in with her to check her progress. Louden, 36, gave birth to her son in a king-sized bed in a birthing center with her husband, David, lying beside her.

"Midwives let women be in whatever position they want to be in -- on their hands and knees on the floor, squatting, in a tub," said Susan Hodges, president of the advocacy group Citizens for Midwifery. "Without signs of a real medical problem, birth should actually be more hands-off than it is.

Messed up...

I read Milliner's Dream's blog and as I was reading this post the other day and mentioned it to my friend and co-worker L, she told me that one of her old roommate was friend with one of the girls who had passed away in the accident. It was a strange coincidence...

Well, it turns out that the girl who was believed to have died in a car accident was actually in the coma. The 2 girls' identities were mistaken and as the girl who woke up from the coma started talking, the family who was taking care of her realized that something was wrong...They finally realized that their daughter was the one who had passed away, and they were taking care of their daughter's friend....L hasn't arrived at the office yet, but I wonder if she even knows about it!

The family who thought that their daughter was in the coma had been writing a blog about how their "daughter" was recuperating...it is really heart breaking to see how they realized that it was in fact not their daughter...