Happy New Year

Well, this year certainly started off with a bang!! As a doula I purposefully book my clients with at least 3 weeks distance in due dates, generally only taking on one client a month. For January I had a woman due Jan 1-3 somewhere and another due Jan 30. So I thought I was all good.

The little one due on the 30th had different plans and he wasn't about to wait until his due date to arrive and I received a call last Tuesday (Dec. 30) that things were starting with them. I still wasn't real worried since I hadn't heard anything from my other client and was thinking she'd probably go overdue anyway and it would all work out fine.

So New Years Eve there I am, having a rockin time at Chad & Jenn Ramers playing Guitar Hero Rock Band. It was hilarious as we all took turns playing drums, bass, & guitar (I never did sing, but the others did). It was a blast. In Zurich the evening started off really stormy and I was thinking it would be a bad night to have to drive to a birth. At around 11 pm we were all in the kitchen getting some more food ready when my cell phone rang. It was my clients for Jan 30th calling and she was in active labour. I wasn't thrilled about having to leave the party to drive all the way to London, but I had lots of energy and I was ready to go (after checking the radar and finding out how to load the hospital into my GPS). The drive was awesome weather-wise and the roads were almost clear.

Then my worst nightmare happened...you know, the thing you dread over and over that never actually happens, well, it happened...my pager went off. I didn't get too excited at first, I just figured it was Joel or maybe the client I was heading to see paging me for some reason. I looked at the number on the pager and didn't recognize it (it was someone's cell), but I called it and the voice on the other end did not belong to the ones I had hoped it would have been...nope, it was my other clients husband calling to tell me that her water had broken. I seriously thought (and hoped) it was a joke, but alas, I had 2 women in labour at the same time, to deliver at two different hospitals (far away from eachother) and it was New Years Eve to boot. After some frantic phone calls to my backup (pulled over to the side of the road in Exeter) I realized that I was just going to have to trust God to work out all the details and I continued on my drive to London. This was not going to be easy for me.

At midnight my phone rang and my darling husband was calling to wish me a Happy New Year. I never imagined I would be spending the midnight hour on the road and not in his arms, it was a little sad. I wasn't real fun to talk to at that point I'm sure, and I do recall several four letter words flying out of my mouth on the phone, but it was really sweet that he had called (even though he was laughing at my situation...not so sweet).

My adventure didn't stop there. This was my first birth that I've attended at the certain hospital I was going to in London, so I wasn't real familiar with the parking garage etc. On the adrenaline high I drove straight into the garage (since the guard was up) and proceeded to park my van in a wonderful spot (I can't imagine why the garage was almost empty at 12:30 a.m. on New Years Day). I grabbed my stuff and proceeded to the stairwell and there on the door it says to take the parking slip into the hospital to pay for parking before you leave...."ah, what slip?" I wonder to myself in panic. I didn't get a slip. Soooo, I walk down the flights of stairs and 1/2way around the parking garage hoofing it through the snow to go back to the garage entrance to get myself a parking slip. When I finally got there (my heart beating madly from both the adrenaline and the physical exertion), I see a nice big sign on the machine at the entrance that says "Free Parking Jan 1st". Cool...just wish I had been smart enough to notice it on the way in.

Then, I headed around the hospital to the ER entrance (which was where everyone at the party suggested I go to get in), this is a fair walk when I'm carrying my big fat doula bag & basically doing a run/walk because I just want to get to my client. So I get to the entrance and the stinkin doors don't open. A moment later I find a sign that says the ER is closed for the holidays and you have to go to another hospital for care...further down on the sign is said for non-emergencies to enter at the temporary entrance back at the side of the hospital that I had been directly across from when I had been at the garage entrance. ARGH. I swear I must have spent 15 minutes getting from my van INTO the hospital. Once inside the kindly security guards showed me the elevators and I found my clients no problem after that. (Huge sigh of relief when I finally entered her room).

So that birth was great and by 7 a.m. I was heading back out to my van and on to Stratford for birth #2. 12 hours later I was headed home with a headache, major exhaustion and those sandpaper eyes I get when I'm so sleep deprived it's not even funny. Thankfully the driving all day was really easy (weather wise) and I was SO grateful for my GPS where I just plugged in the addresses and could drive with no mental effort (not sure I would have found Stratford Gen from London if it had been up to me). I was also very relieved that earlier in the day New Years Eve I had decided to fill up my van so I didn't have to make any stops for gas.

What a day...quite the way to start the new year. Not sure I ever want to attend 2 births in the same day again, I really don't know how midwives to it!! On the bright side, the 2 births are now done and I don't have to stress for the next 2 weeks leading up to my trip about whether I'll make it to the births and if I have all my backup in place etc, and that is a huge weight lifted for me, so in the end it really was a blessing. I'm starting to feel almost normal again but I find it takes me 4 days or so usually to recover from a birth, guess I'm not a real tough doula, but when you give your all to people at such an incredible life-changing event, how can it not take a whole lot out of you.

Happy New Year to the rest of you. If you got to kiss you sweetie at midnight feel blessed, not everyone did. There were lots of us out there working while you were all having fun ;)

Tee hee,
Mel