Exponent II's Blog, page 162

Nursing the Gift of Empathy: 2020 WHO Year of the Nurse and the Midwife

Guest Post by Pat

Pat has a husband, three amazing children and two perfect granddaughters She lives on a large acreage where she enjoy walking, quilting and watching KDramas. 

 

I started nursing school almost 50 years ago. I don’t remember any nurses from my childhood that had an influence on my career. In fact, I would have chosen a completely different career if it hadn’t been for my patriarchal blessing.

 

[image error]I was baptized at age sixteen (the only one in my family to do so) in a small coastal community in British Columbia, Canada. I received my patriarchal blessing the next year. In it, I was told not only to get an education so that I could provide for my family (which was unheard of advice in 1969), but also to get a knowledge of the laws of health. So, when I graduated from high school in 1970, I headed to Vancouver to enroll in nursing school. I had no idea what to expect, but almost from the first day, I fell in love with not only my patients but also my career. It spoke to my soul. It was when I was with my patients, that I learned to communicate heart to heart, spirit to spirit. I don’t really understand the process that I went through to learn this, and it’s still a work in progress but it seemed to me to be both a gift that I have been given as well as a by-product of immersing myself into the service I rendered and truly trying to look into a person’s heart with no ulterior expectations or motives. It was something that has blessed my life in many ways. It has helped protect me and shield me in recognizing spiritual and or physical danger. It has brought me immense joy and self-fulfillment.

 

I served a Church Welfare Services Mission (‘Health Mission”) to Colombia when I was 22 years old.  In this, I was able to use the knowledge gained in my career to teach the people about basic nutrition, health concepts and even sex ed/prenatal classes to a couple who were pregnant. It was there that I began, in embryo, to start to understand the concept of ‘to love as the Savior loved’. King Benjamin taught in Mosiah 2:17 that,

“when you are in the service of your fellow beings, you are only in the service of your God”.

Throughout my career, I felt that because of this teaching, I was able to extend a blanket of love and kindness to those I worked with. I am grateful for my mission that helped me begin to understand this most basic principle, that for me is a foundation for spiritual growth.

 

A colleague who taught an evening psychology class once told me that she described me to her class. She said that being around me felt like being enveloped in love. I attribute that directly to the Spirit who used me as a vehicle to support those with whom I worked. I had many spiritual experiences while working with patients and often felt the Spirit in guiding me how to comfort, motivate, and uplift those whose lives I touched.

 

As I developed my empathetic abilities, I often absorbed the feelings of others. At times, I felt overwhelmed, especially when their feelings were strong, negative or despairing and my patients desperately wanted to share these feelings with me. I learned how to navigate this in a healthy way, for both myself and my patients, while still retaining my ability to sense and feel the emotions of others.

 

Because this became such an important part of my career and my soul, I have had difficulty with those, who had little emotion or empathy of their own, would try to manipulate mine. Learning to set clear boundaries was the way I maneuvered this. Boundary setting doesn’t come easily to someone who is empathetic and it was (and is) difficult to learn but it has been such an important skill for me to develop.

 

Wanting a greater challenge, and being let by the Spirit, at age 50, I went back to school and became a Nurse Practitioner. This was difficult as I was working part time as a Community Nurse, had 2 teenagers and one special needs child, plus my husband was working long hours, often away from home. At times, I questioned whether this was the right thing to do and if I had misinterpreted my Spiritual promptings. My husband also found it hard and struggled with the pressure that this put on my family.  I went to my Bishop several times for a blessing for inspiration. Each time, he would, with tears running down his face, say that he knew that it was challenging for me and my family, but it was what Heavenly Father wanted me to do. This not only helped give me the strength to keep going even though it was difficult, but it also gave a measure of strength to my husband.

 

I was able to work for 10 years as a Nurse Practitioner before retiring from clinical practice. This was the most fulfilling part of my career. I worked with many women who were wanting to be heard and would break down in tears as I listened to them. They would tell me that I was the first health care professional who had really listened to them and had helped them with a proper diagnosis and treatment. I worked with people who society might want to hide away; those experiencing substance abuse, dealing with trauma, mental illness, and poverty. I absolutely have no regrets about going back to school. I learned so much about people and so much about myself. I felt that I was able to accomplish so much more for my small community that I might not have been able to accomplish otherwise.

 

When I retired from clinical practice, I so missed all of them. Each one of me taught me something different and filled my heart in a different way.  I still teach an on-line course every semester as I’m having a hard time letting go of that definition of who I am (a nurse). And although I enjoy the students very much, I find that I have been struggling spiritually since retiring. Neither my callings, nor my other activities have filled that void. And so, I find myself again, searching for ‘a new calling’, one that will help me feel that spiritual fulfillment.

 

I am so grateful that I have been able to be a nurse for so many years. It has fulfilled me spiritually, socially, intellectually and emotionally. If anyone were to ask me if they should consider nursing as a career, my answer would be absolutely!

Keeper of Birth: WHO Year of the Nurse and Midwife

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© The Jordan Collective Photography via Flickr

By Becky

I am a keeper of birth. I stand at the door of life, expecting life to happen, biology to flourish, the breath of life to take easily, as it so often and usually does.

I am also a witness to the fragility of life: that place where the spirit and the body have transition, the place where biology—genetics, disease, accident, and sometimes circumstances of birth, can make transition to mortality a risky proposition at best.

God called me to work at this juncture, to guardian the transition, to be a doorkeeper. I will tell you how.

Like so many birth workers, my own first birth experiences were foundational in guiding me on this path to becoming a midwife. My first labor and birth were routine, but interventional in ways that interrupted biology. Without including many personal details, I was led (society was led, doctors were led, culture was led) down a path that perceives birth as ALWAYS dangerous, ALWAYS perilous, something that should be rescued from, saved from. Birth is often referred to as delivery. Delivery from what? Peril? Evil? Danger? I had wanted to explore my own edges of tolerance for pain and power, and I felt the autonomy of choice removed from me through a process of increasing intervention that did affect the bonding I had with my baby and increased complexity in establishing lactation. Through the miracle of prolactin and oxytocin, we connected and bonded later, but I often have wondered what that might have looked like if fear had not been the overarching motivator in all the decisions made during that health care experience for our family.

So I chose different care providers the next time. I chose a different path to labor and birth. I chose midwives for my own providers, and in choosing, I started down a path where I took God’s hand in guidance for my education, my preceptors, my life experiences, even my childcare arrangements for my children were blessed and arranged for by God when I stepped out in faith, both with a desire to serve, a desire to learn, and a desire to preserve my family. I became a volunteer breastfeeding counselor, even while I birthed and raised my own children. I became the “go to” person people asked about lactation questions for a good number of years. I landed on my feet several years later, having passed my midwifery board exam, and applied for licensure in my state to practice as a licensed midwife, in out-of-hospital settings. I prefer to work in the home setting, but I can also work in a free-standing birth center. I cannot have hospital privileges, which suits my practice model just fine.

In my education process for midwifery the things I learned HAD to include intersectionality. I am still a neophyte in my educational process, learning about the dynamics and forces that shape and affect the women I serve. But maternal and infant morbidity and mortality in the U.S. being what they are (bad and high), and obstetrics currently still ensconced in being one of the least evidence-based branches of medicine, I have had to educate myself thoroughly in social justice issues and bioethical issues that seem extremely disparate, and yet come together at the nexus of women’s health. I work in a field that itself has been discriminated against, with an intentional smear campaign against midwives in U.S. history from the late 1800s through early 1900s, with racial and ethnic overtones against “dirty midwives” and traditional healers. I deal with the fallout of racial issues and eugenics from the 1920s when I fill out birth certificates. I sense echoes of horrific abuse and enslaved women, including Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey, who had surgical techniques practiced, performed and perfected on their unanesthetized bodies when I (rarely) use a speculum to view the cervix and vaginal walls of my client.

I also have to believe the best of my collaborating fellow professional health care providers. When I have a client who needs a consultation with an OB or specialist, it does me no good to expect that their primary motivations are money, power, or savior complex. While those things may be true to some extent, I believe deeply in the fundamental goodness of people, and people who are audacious enough to go into health care, nursing, medicine, anaesthesiology, and other fields, have an intense streak to both help others and for things to “work out” against all odds. This characteristic is a fantastic blessing when someone’s life is on the line, and the doctor or nurse has to be willing to throw all their effort into resuscitation. The double-edged sword blade of it is that they are sometimes ill-equipped to know when things are within a normal amount of variation and no intervention is required. There is also over-intervention present in current obstetrical practices, and still so much benevolent patriarchy, as some health care providers project the “doctor knows best” aura. I sometimes provide parallel care for clients so I am the recipient of the report of the eye-rolling response my clients have to the hand-patting and “don’t worry your little head” attitudes they get from the parallel providers. I was at an integrated training for life support in obstetrics a few years ago, and heard from multiple instructors, “you know what happens to those women who bring a birth plan in for a natural birth.” What happens to them? Just the fact of wanting a conversation about their health care decisions (i.e., a birth plan) makes them more likely to have a cesarean section.

I use the word “client” intentionally. As a midwife supporting physiologic labor and birth, my fundamental view is that labor and birth are not medical events until they become so. What I mean is that our bodies are designed to labor and to birth, and can be supported to successfully do so a majority of the time. That does of course, require excellent childbirth education, exploration of the concepts of pain and fear, cultural views of labor and birth, and sometimes doing the hard internal work of adjusting those views and embracing one’s instinctive self. This can be really challenging for some of my modern, efficient clients. When what is best for labor is to release control, allow surges (contractions) to happen, decrease our alertness and cerebral acuity, and allow ourselves to feel safe and supported, many women find that place a quest to achieve. When society and culture require you to be at the top of your game all the time (succeeding in business and academics), on guard all the time (taking a self-defense class and carrying pepper spray to walk to your car), and commute for long distances (reclining in your car dealing with the stress of traffic), fostering a sense of belonging, safety, security, and relaxation to engage the hormones for the most safe birth possible is really a long trek. This is especially hard for women of color, and most especially Black women.

There is something that is culturally wrong when I have to alter the postpartum instructions I am giving based on whether my client has secure housing, has to go back to work within days of giving birth, or is on the run with her children in an intimate partner violence scenario. I want to tell all the women and birthing people I serve to stay in bed for a week, stay home for a month, and don’t carry anything except their baby for at least two weeks. Instead, I occasionally find them packing for moves and hauling boxes when I come for their postpartum visits, stopping to breastfeed their babies every hour or two. I tell them that the strength of their postpartum bleeding is related to the exertion that they are putting forth, and if it gets heavier they need to slow down. You try telling a mother of many to slow down.

I believe I am a midwife with eyes wide open. I have a degree in biology; I understand that life can be feckless and unlucky, the genetic or circumstantial experiences just toss the dice badly, and ALIVENESS isn’t something we can count on. But I also am frustrated with a system that assumes bad things are always going to happen, and health care decisions must be made “to keep from getting behind the 8-ball.” (an actual quote from my OB). You know, given even less-than-ideal growth conditions, life flourishes. If there is sufficient nutrition and rest, and enough emotional support and excellent health care, most women and birthing people will be able to have a vaginal birth, even a lovely and empowering birth.

When I talk about safety in birth, I say birth is as safe as life is. When my clients choose to birth in their homes, they are choosing one set of risks, and for clients who labor and birth in a hospital setting, there is another set of risks. Autonomy and personal choice and decision are hallmarks of my care. I want EVERY birthing person to be fully informed about all their choices, and the consequences and sometimes fallout of the choices they make, even when they didn’t have full information. My clients often feel like my informed consent documents are LONG and DETAILED, and we spend a lot of time talking about what care might look like in a hospital, with other providers, and with me. Those details are the education process to be able to make informed decisions.

I believe the midwifery model of care is an excellent health care model for everyone, and should be implemented without delay across the United States. I am U.S. based, and my information is primarily U.S. based. And whether it is good or not, health care policy from the U.S. trickles down around the world and usually gets amplified in often not-so-good ways.

My favorite parts of being a midwife are all wrapped up in the mother-baby dyad. I love seeing a birthing person labor (occasionally) for hours or days, accepting the next stage of release of control, as they gain the next level of ability to manage discomfort as the baby navigates the passage through the pelvis and the mother’s healthy cervix widens to accommodate what is, after all, a big passenger. I love seeing the moment of birth, the peak of oxytocin, the mother holding her baby triumphantly, and everyone in the room weeping with love and exultancy. Very often this mother felt her power all taken away in a prior birth experience, and like me, was looking for something different, to take back her autonomy and power. And HER choice and HER effort, in concert with HER baby’s effort brings her to this place,where she will mother/parent her baby with power and confidence.

This is not the birth experience of everyone I serve. But if their experiences take another direction, intervention, cesarean section; I still hope they feel supported in the decision-making process and informed. And this is the other side of my work, also my privilege—to “mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort”—when my heart breaks a thousand times, supporting women who miscarry, who cannot conceive in the first place, or who mourn their birth experiences and wish they had also had the triumphant labor and birth.

I follow social movements of policy and law, ensure my licensure in the states I practice in, and educate myself according to international organizations’ standards. But my own midwifery model of care is based on this: I make a difference in the world one and two people at a time. I do everything I can to get out of the way and help women and birthing people find their autonomy and power. And like the parable about throwing starfish back into the ocean, I know that this midwife “made a difference for that one.”

Becky is a licensed midwife who lives and practices in northern Virginia.

A Podcast of One’s Own discusses the 2020 WHO Year of the Nurse and the Midwife

A Podcast of One’s Own, by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is a great listen. With an eye to our Nursing and Miswifery Series, the the July 24 Anne Marie Rafferty interview is 20 minutes well spent. Enjoy!

Queensland passes law to jail priests for not reporting confessions of child sexual abuse

“The legislation means religious institutions and their members are no longer able to use the sanctity of confessional as a defence or excuse in child sex abuse matters.”

 

Queensland, in the state of Australia, does not limit this to Catholic or Anglican Priests. Any ecclesiastical leader leader who does not report child sex crime when confessed in a confessional will be imprisoned for three years. (THIS MEANS BISHOPS)

The story is here. 

The Winding Career Path that Led Clara Barton to Become America’s Most Famous Nurse: WHO Year of the Nurse and the Midwife

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American and Guinea-Bissau stamps honoring Clara Barton

Clara Barton eventually became America’s most famous nurse and the founder of the American Red Cross, but she began her career as a teacher.  When she was a child, a phrenologist suggested teaching as a means for Clara to overcome her shyness. (Phrenology was an early forerunner to psychology.) And it wasn’t like there were a lot of other professional options available to a woman of her era.

She got a teaching job as a teen, as soon as she finished her own schooling.  After about a decade as a teacher, she wanted to go back to school, but couldn’t find a college that would accept women. So she re-enrolled in high school, this time at a more prestigious one than the one she attended as a kid, and tried to keep her actual age quiet.

After High School Take 2, she moved to Bordentown, New Jersey, where she had neither acquaintances nor job prospects. She asked about teaching jobs, only to learn that there weren’t any; there weren’t any schools! About half of the kids were privately tutored and the other half wandered the streets feral all day. Ironically, the town did have a school board, although they had nothing to govern. Clara approached the chair with a proposal:

“I want to open a public school in Bordentown and teach it myself,” she told him.

Peter [the school board chair] frowned. “These boys are renegades, many of them more fit for the penitentiary than school. A woman could do nothing with them. They wouldn’t go to school if they had the chance,” he told Clara.

Clara was aware that some of the boys had been expelled from improvised living room classrooms but she did not fault the kids. She had determined that their teachers had “no fitness for the position and no ability for instruction beyond their own limited knowledge gleaned years before in some similar manner. When this limit was reached, usually made visible in mathematics, and the pupil became aware of it, he was no longer an agreeable or even a safe member of the school. In fact, as such he became an undesirable citizen and was graduated into the street in disgrace.”

These same undereducated private tutors would bitterly oppose any competitor luring away tuition-payers with free services, Peter warned Clara, “and the parents would never send them to a pauper school.”

“Pauper school” was local parlance for public schools.  A few years back, the New Jersey Legislature had appropriated funds for public education, but in Bordentown, Peter explained, public sentiment equated free education with degradation. The only previous attempt at opening a public school had failed.

“You would have the respectable sentiment of the entire community against you,” he warned her. “A strong man would quail and give way under what he would be compelled to meet, and what could a woman—a young woman—and a stranger do?” asked Peter, but the question must have been hypothetical, because he did not wait for an answer. Continuing on, he commended Clara for her good intentions while encouraging her to forget the whole matter.

At last he paused for breath. Apparently winded from the strain of listing so many obstacles, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Clara waited in silence a little longer, just to be sure he really was finished, before she said, “Thank you, Mr Suydam. Shall I speak?”

Peter laughed. “Certainly Miss Barton,” he said. “I will try to be as good a listener as you have been.”

Clara thanked him for his sincerity and concern for her well-being before she made her case:

I’ve been a teacher of the public schools of New England for years. That is my profession, and if entered in the long and honored competitive list of such, I do not suppose that in either capacity, experience, or success I should stand at the foot.

I’ve studied the character of these boys and have intense pity for, but no fear of them.

As for exclusion from society, I have not sought society, and could easily dispense with it…I am not here for that. …My only desire is to open and teach a school in Bordentown, to which its outcast children could go and be taught.

Clara proposed a trial period—the board need only commit to two terms—but that was not enough to sway the chairman, so Clara offered an extreme concession: she would work without pay if the board would just supply the classroom.

That is when Peter offered to bring her proposal to the school board.

The board approved her proposal—a free teacher was a great deal, after all—and her school was so successful that they eventually decided to build a schoolhouse, hire more teachers and (phew!) give Clara a salary.

But it was less than half of the salary of the male principal they hired to oversee the female teachers at the school Clara had started. They offered Clara the position of “female assistant.” She quit.

Clara left New Jersey and moved to Washington, DC. She still wanted a college education, and since no one would give her one she decided to take care of it herself by studying independently at the Library of Congress. She went there every day until the day the carriage of Charles Mason, the commissioner of patents, arrived unexpectedly at her doorstep. It took her to a government building, where her congressman was waiting for her.

“The commissioner asked me if I knew a man of perfect integrity and trustworthiness who could do some important work for him in finding out where fraud had been perpetrated on his accounts,” he told her.  “And I told him I knew of no such man but I did know a woman who could exactly serve him and he told me to send for her and so here you are.”

Clara became the first woman on the agency’s payroll. Charles Mason was ahead of his time.  He believed in equal pay for equal work and soon hired other women in addition to Clara. His boss, on the other hand, President Franklin Pierce’s Secretary of the Interior, Robert McClelland, did not share this enlightened attitude. When he realized what was going on at the Patent Office, he demoted the women from clerks to copyists, paid on commission with no regular salary. The secretary wanted to fire the women altogether, but eventually yielded to the commissioner’s protests. Mason couldn’t give them their old titles back, but backhandedly paid such unusually handsome commissions that Clara’s income remained the same.

That is where she was working when the Civil War began, close enough to the troops to join other volunteers in delivering supplies and nursing the wounded when they arrived from battle. She sent word to friends and charities in Massachusetts that she could pass along donations, and they sent so many that she moved out of her apartment into a warehouse where she could store them.  When that filled up, she rented another. Wounded soldiers often arrived in the city after infection had set in, when it was too late to save them. Clara had an idea to provide first aid right on the battlefield, but couldn’t find an army official who would let a woman on the front lines. Most thought it would be too dangerous for a woman; some thought a woman would require more help than she would give.

“I cannot rest satisfied. It is little that one woman can do, still I crave the privilege of doing that,” Clara declared.

That changed on the day she met Colonel Daniel Rucker.

On the day she appeared at Colonel Daniel Rucker’s office, the room was crowded.  He had created a makeshift waiting area by dividing his desk from the rest of the space with a little fence with a gate. Seated on the waiting side, Clara could see him frantically responding to petitioners, sending off aids and giving orders in a non-stop stream of action.

He eventually noticed Clara sitting among the crowd and called out gruffly, “Well, what do you want?”

Clara stood up. Startled, words were not forthcoming. Tears came instead.

To Clara’s good fortune, the colonel had a soft spot for crying women and the gruffness melted. “Why, what’s the matter?” he asked. “Don’t cry. Come in here and sit down until you get over this and don’t be frightened. I will do anything I can for you.”

As Clara walked over to the desk, the colonel continued dispatching others at lightning speed.  When she reached it, he turned to her and said, in a much gentler tone, “Now tell me all about it. What is it you want?”

“I want to go to the front,” Clara responded.

“The front? That’s no place for you. There’s going to be a battle and you are much better away.”

“But that is why I want to be there. I want to go to the front.”

“But what for? Have you a father or brother there?”

“No. I’ve got nobody there.”

“Then why do you want to go?”

“I have some things I want to take to the soldiers,” she said.

“What kind of things?”

“Oh, every kind of thing.” Her answer was too vague, but the busy colonel hurried on anyway.

“Well, how much is there of it?” he asked as he turned to his desk.

“I am sure I can’t say, sir.”

“Will it take a wagon?” he asked as he fussed with his papers.

“Oh yes, sir. It will take more than a wagon.”

”How many then? Where have you got it?”

“I have it in my house, sir,” said Clara. “And in three warehouses.”

That got his attention. He stopped looking at his desk and stared at Clara. “Three warehouses? Heavens!”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Clara.

“Well, take this.” He passed her a paper. “It’s an order for six wagons and the men to load them and here is your permit to go to the front and God bless you.”

On the battlefield, Clara and her team proved their value to the troops. The press reported their exploits and Clara didn’t have to beg for permits again.  Other women soon followed.

“And if you chance to feel that the positions I occupied were rough and unseemly for a woman,” said Clara. “I can only reply that they were rough and unseemly for men.”

The quoted content in this post are excerpts from my upcoming book, Ask a Suffragist: Stories and Wisdom from Activists Who Built a Movement. You can learn more about it and pre-order it here.

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The first book in the Ask a Suffragist series, Ask a Suffragist: Stories and Wisdom from America’s First Feminists, is available now.  You can learn more about it and buy it here.

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Learn more about the Ask a Suffragist project at askasuffragist.com

Transformative Power of Birth: 2020 WHO Year of the Nurse and Midwife

Guest Post by Annie Kuntz

Annie is originally from outside of Boston, Massachusetts and has been living in El Paso, Texas for 10 years.  Annie has been a Certified Professional Midwife for 13 years, and runs her own busy home birth practice.  She has been married to her husband for 17 years, and has four children, ages 6 to 15.  She loves good conversation, laughing until she cries with her friends and family, reading books in a bubble bath, skinny-dipping, card games, singing, music of all kinds, and binge-watching crime and cooking shows.  She hopes to change the world, one birth at a time. 

 

It was 3 am.  My sleep was interrupted by a cry of “birth team” yelled from down the hall.  Heart pounding, I jumped up to put on my brand new scrubs.  Wiping sleep from my eyes, I quietly slipped into the room, and stood against the back wall.  The mother was grunting and panting, the assistant mopping her brown with a cool washcloth.  The father hovered nearby, nervous and excited.  [image error]The midwife spoke quietly and calming to the mother, encouraging her, directing her.  I stood and watched in awe as the tiny head began to appear, with wet, dark hair.  As the baby emerged completely, the midwife gently guided her to the mother’s chest, all the time praising the mother for her hard work and welcoming this new life to the world.  Tears sprung to my eyes, and the very clear thought came into my head: “This is my life’s work.”

 

Witnessing that first birth put my life on a course I never could have anticipated.  I was in college, working towards a B.A. in English that I would ultimately only use to write and edit practice guidelines, protocols and client handouts.  This opportunity to shadow midwives for a month fell into place so quickly, that it was clear to me later that it was a divine path that lead me to my calling.

 

[image error]People often ask me, “does it ever get old?”  No.  No, it doesn’t.  I’ve now witnessed about 850 births and each one amazes me, feels sacred, teaches me something, scares me, connects me, lifts me up.  Each birth is different.  But never boring.  I still cry, I grin from ear to ear, I shake from the rush of adrenaline flowing out of me.  Sometimes, I sit, spent, with my head in my hands and try to breathe life back into myself.  I have felt the hands of my Heavenly Mother guiding my hands.  I have called on Her when I’m scared or confused.  I have thanked Her profusely when a baby breathes that I have had to resuscitate.  Her words have come in the voices of my mentors, colleagues, students and assistants.  And in clear thoughts in my mind of what to do.  I feel Her spirit in the room, in those holy, sacred moments.  Birth is Her space.

 

At the Exponent II Retreat in 2013, Fara Anderson Sneddon taught a workshop on the history of women giving blessings.  My world broke open.  Learning the beauty of blessings that were given to expectant mothers felt like coming home.  I wept as I learned that midwives were called and given Priesthood authority to practice their craft in the early days of the Church.  Picturing my midwifery ancestors laying their hands on mothers and babies to bless and heal filled my heart with joy.  It further confirmed my knowledge that midwifery is truly a calling, and one guided by our Heavenly Mother.

 

Midwifery has enveloped my life.  It connects all parts of me.  My passion, my feminism, my musicianship, my sense of justice, my politics,[image error] my sensitivity.  It’s not just a job.  It’s an identity.  I have to fight hard to defend midwifery in my country, which connects me to my work in a radical way.  Sometimes it’s answering basic questions like, “Is home birth really safe?”, sometimes it’s attending meetings with legislators and lobbyists, sometimes it’s defending a client’s choice to a doctor.  Midwifery is an outlier in the US.  Many countries have embraced midwifery-led care as the standard of care for pregnancy, birth, postpartum and neonatal care.  These healthcare systems have integrated midwives as primary care providers for pregnancy, who refer to obstetricians if complications arise.  The majority of these countries have vastly better maternal and infant outcomes than in the US.

 

Midwifery has transformed my once liberal feminism to radical feminism to intersectional feminism.  The capitalist healthcare system in the US rewards procedures and interventions, which midwives rarely perform.  This system is also misogynistic, racist, transphobic, homophobic, classist, and xenophobic.  Especially stark are high rates of Black maternal and infant morbidity and mortality.  I have witnessed, experienced personally, and listened to people process their birth trauma.  Our obstetric system often strips birthing people of their humanity, their rights, and their power.  The medical system considers pregnancy and birth as illness or emergency.  Midwifery looks at pregnancy and birth as natural, physiologic events.  I have heard phrases like, “My baby is too big to fit through my pelvis”, “my cervix doesn’t open”, “my doctor won’t let me” over and over again.  When did we allow a broken medical system to strip us of the innate power of the birthing body?

 

[image error]Witnessing the power of the birthing person is what I love most about my job.  Yes, the babies are cute, and that first cry is magic.  But watching someone go to the darkest, most intimate, and most challenging place within themselves is an honor that I will never take for granted.  The birthing person must face their mortality.  They must push through the fear, pain, exhaustion, and “I can’t do this anymore” in order to greet their baby.  This liminal space is holy.  That moment when the baby emerges, and the pain vanishes, the face changes from pain and concentration to delight and relief, that is the moment that keeps me going in this work.

 

 

 

The hours suck.  Being on call constantly is the worst.  The highs are the very highest, and the lows have crushed me and made me question whether or not I can keep going.  I’ve missed birthdays, school events, holidays, and countless hours of sleep. [image error] I disappear for hours or days at a moment’s notice.  My husband is understanding and my kids are proud.  They excitedly ask if the baby was a boy or a girl when I come home, sweaty and tired.  They have held me as I’ve cried at the rare loss of a baby.  But sometimes, they miss me, they feel my priority is to my clients instead of them.  They tell me they wish I was home more and I wasn’t on my phone so much.  This profession has a profound effect on myself and my family.  We are trying to find the balance together.

 

Sometimes, I do some mundane thing right after a birth, like pick up some groceries or go to the post office.  As I walk around, I just want to yell, “I witnessed a miracle this morning!”  I am bursting with birth stories.  I believe in the power of midwifery to transform birth in the US.  I have hope that integrating midwives into our healthcare system will help decrease health inequities for the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities.  I trust that we will reclaim the beauty of birth, the strength of our bodies, and the deep divine within each of us.  For me, birth will never get old.

 

 

“Mama Nurse” : 2020 Year of the Nurse and the Midwife

Guest Post By Lee

Lee is the mother of a son, she is a devoted wife, and after a great life in New York, is now happily retired in Texas.

 

There I was in my early 20’s, a young mother and a husband who cheated on me more than I cared to comprehend. Something in his personality changed after our son was born. That something frightened me; I did not feel safe. So, when my roguing husband asked me to leave, I did not feel obligated to his status as “head of the house”, and I left.

 

I had the example of my mother who was a single mother for a time. She had a tremendous work ethic and seemingly endless energy. She would say “we are not lazy people; we work.” Employed or not, my mother worked as volunteer in the Air Force with family services, supporting families who had domestic difficulties, and she worked as Brownie and Girl Scout leader, among other things. She also taught me to put everyone else first. As the eldest daughter of six children, I had done that in caring for my younger siblings. Thus, when I finally went away to college, I felt free. But date rape, the devastating trauma, and resulting poor self-esteem, plus ongoing financial hardships resulted in a poor marriage choice.

 

When I left him, I moved home with my mother and the father I had been sealed to, and worked to gain sole custody of my son. It was not hard. My ex had no interest in my darling baby boy, and I had no interest in his child support. I wanted my son for myself and not have that example for a father. At that time, I had no income, and my liberal arts degree wasn’t employable enough to put food on the table, or even pay for my share within the household.

 

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1980’s Nurse Uniform Sewing Patterns

The Nurse Training Act that had passed in 1971 provided government funding to become an LPN (Licenses Practical Nurse). A tuition-free program was within my budget, so that is how I decided to become a nurse. When I communicated my decision with my beloved great-grandmother, she shared that she too, had been a nurse. In this, she expressed concern over my having been the oldest in a family of six children and the work I had shouldered in the family, and now devoting my life to a profession that would also require selfless serving.  But knowing that she had been a nurse inspired and motivated me. I knew I could do this. I knew it.

 

Money was still tight. I used to give blood, but sometimes, because I had eaten so little, my blood pressure was so low that they wouldn’t take my blood. I would also go to the salad bar that was paid for by weight, select mostly leaves and pay before saying, “Oh! I forgot salad dressing; do you mind if I add it?” And would add it to my plate without paying extra. I always hoped that Heavenly Father would understand about that.

 

I started work as an Aide. I was so excited to be there. I finally had a paycheck! And everything fascinated me. I had such high energy that the doctors often invited me to help them, or watch them, and they would teach me. I really had fun!

 

It is the most sacred feeling of taking care of fellow spirits. One time, we brought a client back, and he was so angry with us! After seeing the other side of the veil, he cried out, “Why did you do that?” There was another client I recall. After rigor set in, his arms reached out to someone as if he were being embraced.

 

For the next thirty years, I spent my life involved in the most satisfying interaction in healing hearts and minds, and helping individuals requiring a variety of assistance. I witnessed in the emergency room and in bedside home care clients who had not only crossed beyond the veil and returned, but some who were finally returning home to our Heavenly Parents for good. I worked in medical surgical floors, the emergency department, with clients on ventilators or in cardiac arrest. And finally, hospice or end of life care.

 

The creative portion of my personality found solutions to provide client specific needs. I’d ask and formulate menus of favorite foods, sometimes favorite soothing music, warmed blankets, dress them while bedridden and provide every comfort measure as tailored to their needs.  One client constantly asked me about my life. I was tickled by this, and a little confused. He told me, “I’ve never met someone with the same level of compassion as you.” I was humbled by his words. I never wanted to leave my job.

 

I eventually remarried, but like Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, the Myalgic Encephalomyelitis I developed as a nurse prevented me from having more children. That is where the church came in.

 

I was often called to Girls Camp and even Boys Camp. They called me “Mama Nurse.” Besides “Mama Nurse,” I was

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also called “Ward Mother” and at Institute, YSAs called me “New York Mama.” I cherished it. I felt like most of my calling was in listening to the kids. They would co

me to my cabin at night and just needed to talk. And I would listen. I think some of the other leaders were jealous, but I think people understand that as a nurse, you can be trusted. And you’ll listen to them and believe them. One night, a girl who had been sexually abused came and spoke to me and asked me the questions she didn’t know who else to ask. I listened, and answered. She told me how much it physically hurt to be violated, and why would anyone ever want to do that? I taught her from my own experience, that one day, when she chooses, she will be able to relax, and it won’t hurt. It will be okay.

 

Sacred experiences like this and others reminded me of the sacred calling of nurses. Though most of the camp “injuries” were in regard to rashes, dehydration and allergies, the real nursing was in listening. I found that some people feel the spirit in the outdoors. Other people, not so much. Both kinds of people appreciated having a nurse. And I loved being there for them.

 

The only bit of advice I would offer to those who are considering being a nurse, is to follow the advice they offer at the start of airline flights. “Place the oxygen mask on yourself before serving others.” It is such a giving position that I neglected my health, and now deal with chronic fatigue. I still loved my life as a nurturer/ Nurse. Being a nurse was sacred to me and I am grateful every day that I was able to serve in that way.

 

WHO YEAR OF THE NURSE AND MIDWIFE SERIES: INTRO POST AND INVITATION

“You need to go to the nurse’s office,” my first-grade teacher said to me.

 

I was confused. I felt fine. Why did I need to go see the school nurse? I was just under two years old when I was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Because of this, it took a long time for me to learn what a low blood sugar felt like. Bu the time I was six, it was still har. More often than I care to remember, I ended up uncontrollably shaking, unable to speak, with my mother spooning honey in my mouth.

 

With such a young diabetic, there was some push back in my attending public school. But my parents had a meeting with the principal, the school nurse and my teachers, resulting in a crash-course on diabetes care. Usually, it meant giving me a cookie and sending me to the nurse’s office, calling my mother, or both.

 

I liked the school nurse. I even liked going to her office. She didn’t look at me funny while I ate a cookie at 9:30 in the morning, and smiled at me[image error] even when my speech was slurred. She always seemed to know when I needed her to take my hand and tell me I was going to be okay, and that no one but the teacher noticed that my blood-sugar had been too low. Though she was small, only a bit taller than I was at that early age, I felt safe whenever she was around.

 

Still. It was my class Easter party! Why did I need to go to her office? I knew better than to protest. Or maybe protesting hadn’t occurred to me yet. So, without hesitation or question, I walked the school hallways alone to her small, safe office.

 

She greeted me with a huge grin. “Happy Easter!” she said.

 

“Happy Easter,” I shyly responded. The nurse had some Easter bunny colouring sheets, and a plastic carrot, that when a small switch was flicked, popped open with a white rabbit and an ear-piercing squeak! I loved it. After a while, she asked me to come and sit in her chair, where she called the real live Easter Bunny on the phone. Yes. You read that right. I spoke to the actual Easter Bunny on the phone that day in school. It still is one of the best memories I have from my childhood.

 

When I went back to class, everyone’s desk seemed especially clean. It took me a few years to figure it out—they all had shared Easter candy when I was with the nurse. Candy was something that diabetic kids can’t play with- and though I was well prepared to not have any while everyone else did, the school nurse took the time and to make that school Easter Party into something extra special for just me.

 

Perhaps that is when my love of nurses started, perhaps before. I have at least a dozen memories of nurses doing just what I needed emotionally, not just saving my life, but saving my soul.

 

[image error]So when I learned that 2020 was designated as the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife by the World Health Organization (WHO), I wanted to celebrate it! I wanted to thank nurses. I wanted all the nurses in the world to know how much they mean to me, and how grateful I am for them.

 

The best way I could figure out how to do that was to invite my friends, our Bloggers, and everyone—including you—to join in on this celebration.

 

 

To be clear, 2020 was chosen well before the Corona Virus to be the year of the nurse and the midwife. These are a few of the reasons:

 

It is the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth (May 12, 1820).[image error]

 

Nurses and midwives make up more than 50% of the health workforce in many countries and, in some cases, may be the only medical provider in rural or developing areas. Because of this, nurses are essential in improving public health outcomes around the world.

 

 

2020 will be the first year in which the WHO will release a World’s Nursing Report. Some of the goals addressed by this new report are the educate and reduce infant mortality by 30% and reducing Malaria instances by 30%

 

Nurses are in global demand and we desperately need more! In the U.S. alone, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts that the U.S. will need an additional 200,000+ nurses per year from now until 2026. This is an example of one developed country, offering a powerful refection of  a massive global need.

 

It’s the culmination of the Nursing Now campaign. Nursing Now is a global campaign to improve [image error]global health by raising the status and profile of nurses.

 

 

Both Nursing Now and the WHO describe a “Triple Impact” that comes from supporting nurses: better community health, stronger economies, and greater gender equality.

 

 

 

 

 

The church has it’s own ties to nursing and midwifery that we will be blogging about in this series (remember the church’s 2016 invitation for there to be a nurse in every mission?0. We are thrilled to be sharing various stories from LDS nurses, midwives, doulas, and patients on various days through September and October.

 

[image error]We would love for you to join us and read about these amazing (mostly) women, and for those who are nurses and midwives, or have been helped by nurses and midwives, to consider writing for us, and participate in our series. PLEASE SUBMIT A GUEST POST! 

 

I am eternally grateful to these primarily female health care providers. You have all made and continue to make the world a better place. Thank you.

A Joyful Christian Coming Out

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Tiger Veenstra — crushing it

I have known Tiger Veenstra for the last five years, since our boys were in preschool together. I loved our conversations — full of sharp insight, laughter, great advice. Tiger is a psychologist, as well as a devout Christian who affiliates with the Presbyterian church. Tiger actually (and so generously) agreed to come to a Relief Society meeting when I was teaching one day to share some insights on navigating relationships. It was a huge hit.

Tiger and I haven’t hung out as much the last couple of years, but a few months ago when I saw their coming out post on Facebook announcing their new name and pronouns, I was nearly moved to tears. The joy! The confidence! The security in their connection to God! I could not have been happier for Tiger. Here’s an excerpt (shared with permission) of their coming out post.

Hi friends! Good news! My name is Tiger and I’m living my best life!

Thank you to all of you who have been so loving and supportive during the last 41 bumpy years or the last few as I’ve really started to blaze a new trail to finding a home within myself.

Why, how, where Tiger you ask? I’ve been really working on listening to myself and checking what I hear against what I hear from God, mostly as I have been reading the Bible cover to cover this past year or so. (If you’re interested, try the Immerse Bible. It’s a very different read and it’s blown my mind and revolutionized my faith. Turns out it doesn’t say what I thought it did.) So I’ve been listening. And I’ve been realizing that the name given to me at birth, like the gender I was assigned, just wasn’t working for me anymore.

In the process of rethinking their gender, Tiger began to rethink their birth name. I love how they describe the moment of hearing someone accidentally call them Tiger for the first time. I wish we could all experience moments like this — a “tsunami of awesomeness and aliveness” as we embrace new journeys, new paths, new identities that fit us and feel so right.

In the process of discovering that I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER using the pronouns they/them, I also wondered if a new name might level me up as well…. But at the same time, how does one name oneself? The process just seemed too self indulgent and dramatic for me. I wasn’t even considering it really. Until one day a stranger made a mistake and addressed me as Tiger. There was an earthquake in my soul. And it triggered a tsunami of awesomeness and aliveness that I can’t deny, and without good reason, refuse to stop.

So that’s it my friends. My name is Tiger. My pronouns are they/them. And I’m crushing it.

Tiger goes on to say that they don’t mind if people joke and snicker about the new name. They say:

My whole life I’ve felt really horrible inside while managing the outside which has led to a lot of success. For most of my life I’ve been telling myself “no” so that I could present myself in ways that would make others say “yes” to me. Now I’m saying “yes” to myself and to a dynamic relationship with God, and if people want to tell me “no,” it just doesn’t seem like a big deal anymore. Peace to you all, even the ones who snicker and roll your eyes. I have deep deep love for you all!

I loved everything about this post. My heart exploded with joy for Tiger when I read this. I am thrilled Tiger has found theologies, Bibles, and religious and familial communities that have supported them in this transition. These theologies and communities have enabled them to retain their affiliation, Christian devotion, and family relationships.

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books Tiger has found helpful on their journey

But that joy was shadowed with a bit of sadness as I thought about LGBTQ folks in my own Mormon community. LGBTQ Mormons don’t have theological or ecclesiastical structures and systems in place to support them coming out with such joy and confidence. Mormonism, unfortunately, embraces a strict gender binary and takes heteronormativity to a new level in the theological realm, actually cementing it in the Mormon concept of an anatomically male God the Father married to an anatomically female God the Mother. The theology and the church seem to not know what to do about LGBTQ folks who don’t fit into the binaries, identities, and orientations it promotes as eternal.

I think it’s time for the church to stop focusing so much on gender roles, orientations, and heteronormative family patterns. Instead, how many more people could the church help, love, and nurture if it focused on people as individuals, in all their wonderful unique identities, presentations, and orientations? How much richer would our communities be, as we love and embrace difference and learn to love people as individuals?

Tiger’s journey is a model to me. A model of what joyful coming out can look like when supportive, inclusive structures and theologies are in place. Thank God for those structures and theologies. And I pray, God, let our tradition evolve to sustain and support all God’s children.

(For more about Tiger, visit their professional website. )

 

Battle of the Hymns

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“Arm Wrestling” by
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Used According to CC BY-SA 2.0

We’re about 6 months in to COVID-restricted church and with Fast Sunday coming up this Sunday, you may be needing a pick-me-up from Zoom Testimony Meeting. Have no fear! We all know the best way to get your spirits up is in good, clean, fun sport. Sports have been looking different this year, but one thing that we love is pitting women against each other!

I have created two brackets of hymns- each hymn written by a female lyricist. One bracket is full of reverent, spiritual songs and the other bracket is full of exuberant, spiritual songs. Which hymn wins out for you? It’s Battle of the Hymns!

reverent-hymns-bracketDownload



exuberant-hymns-bracketDownload
 

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Reverent Hymns bracket

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