This and that, the update.

Dear blogfriends, please forgive the subheadings, there's a lot to tell.

MIDWIFERY
I made arrangements for me to back up at some planned homebirths early this year. That period has now ended and the score is: Homebirths occurred 3, homebirths attended by me 1.5.

Yeah I know....bummer eh? I was ready, willing and waiting, sleeping with the phone by me and knew they were on. The first I managed to see all the way through as you saw in my previous post. It was stripped back and simple and lovely. The second went into labour overdue by a couple of weeks. The primary midwife attended and was in communication with me, I was ready to leave at a moment's notice, the house was 40 mins from my place. She laboured quietly apparently and was well attended by family. There was radio silence for a while, then an "uuummmm, she went from nothing to pushing and 2 pushes later....ta-da!" So great for her, a first-timer, to birth so well, I'm thrilled for them all, really. But......

The third was a second baby and the first had been really quick. Less than an hour quick! So I was poised to possibly be the first one there as I live closer to her. I am still doing my regular job as well, and we have been trusting to the universe that it will all work out. Phut! The universe clearly didn't get my memo about a late/early split shift last week followed by eight days off which were coinciding with the due date. So when the phone rang at 5.10am I thought it was the alarm gone off early.......Then slammed upright when I blurrily saw that it was the first midwife calling! OOoh, decisions, decisions - she was really quick with the first one, I've got time for her to pop it out and still get to work on time. I committed and dashed out. I got there at 5.27 and she was labouring, but still smiling. Things hotted up, then quietened down, as they do, but my start time was approaching.....I called in that I would be late, and mentally made up my mind that I would stay for now, but that if the birth wasn't imminent at 7.30 I would slip away and the other midwife would call a different midwife to back up. And so it went. Bummer. The baby was born at 9.13am. It would have been too much of a stretch to be that late for work.

So the experience I have gained is of providing antenatal and postnatal care in the community, and also intrapartum care in the woman's own home. I have witnessed one homebirth (my second). It was good. I can see the learning curve before me should I choose to continue to work in this field. I need to gather a lot more equipment. I could easily become used to doing less with women, as they take a lot more responsibility for their own issues than women I usually see through the hospital setting. There is less 'routine' assessment and more reliance on behavioural changes in labour. Spontaneous and physiological, just the way it should be. All the usual assessments are there, just less VEs and when they were done (by the primary MW) they were at points when I would have done them to clarify issues as well.

There is no shortage of work out there. With upcoming changes to maternity service provision by the federal government there are many opportunities for midwives to set up in group practices with Medicare provider numbers and limited prescribing rights, as long as they are deemed 'eligible' (a nebulous description, yet to be fully defined but being worked on furiously) and hold professional indemnity insurance, which will not cover them to birth anywhere but in a hospital. This has recently been released for a cost of $7500 per annum full time cover. Stay tuned! I do plan to become eligible - in fact if I was doing my PD instead of blogging it would happen sooner.

I have also been continuing to work with a group planning the commencement of a midwifery group practice in our hospital, hopefully by mid-year. It has to be signed off by roughly 47,000 people including doctors but I think we're up to 35, 766 signatures and the work is all downhill from here! This would be groundbreaking in this state, and I have seen my name on the sample rosters so it may come true! Can't wait.

HEALTH
Twice this year I have had my life flash before my eyes and prepared for my imminent death.

I wish I was kidding.

What I have learned from this is that my husband really needs a cell phone. So the kids CAN in theory contact him when he is in Sydney for a conference and Mum has died of a stroke. As it was I managed to get an appointment with the GP and get a presciption for antihypertensives just before it blew out any blood vessels in my brain, but I suspect it was close. It was extremely unpleasant. I then developed an attractive rash from the meds and changed them a week later. They remain effective.

The second time was when I was woken by upper abdo pain and thought I was going to throw up. I decamped to the loo whereupon I had an 'episode' of tingling, profuse sweating, pins and needles in my face and arms and extreme lightheadedness and a sense of impending doom. Visions of Elvis abounded and I was convinced I was about to have a heart attack. This was in the very early hours of the morning after our daughter's 21st party, so waking a still inebriated husband was quite challenging, as I swooned on the toilet and resorted to banging the glass screen repeatedly while moaning. After a while I managed to croak out his name loud enough and he stumbled out to find me. An ambulance was called and I was whisked off. It turned out to be a vaso-vagal event (they think) as my heart was fine and my blood pressure was elevated but not catastrophic. Phew. I felt sheepish, but would have felt worse if I hadn't paid attention to it. I have seen someone have a fatal coronary and I felt how they looked....so I did the best I could to get help. It lasted about 10-15 minutes (I think) but it was really scary, and I'm grateful it was something benign.

I have discovered that I am not ready to die.

BIRTHDAYS
My son turned 24. He is a sweetie and good company. Please God, let him pass this last semester at uni. He has a girlfriend. There is much 'noise' coming from his bedroom. There is often another mouth to feed. It is OK.

My daughter turned 21. We had the party we planned except for the fact that the pizza oven was too wide to fit through the gate (or the gate was too narrow for the oven to pass). We were flexible about this and luckily had a wide driveway and a paved frontyard that could be rapidly put to use as the pizzeria. A Good Time was had by all, pizza was made, cooked and consumed with gusto if not in the same square metreage of yard. Tromping through the house was expected anyway. The back patio was gorgeous and people mixed and mingled at the tables we set up. We did two big photoboards for her which were fantastic to do. She received some lovely gifts. People continue to wish her well. This is good.

STORM DAMAGE
The skylight is fixed. A Man came from 50km away to do it. The SES had arrived a few days after the storm and covered and secured it with thick black plastic for which we were grateful. The car remains dented. This PITA is likely to continue to be so for a while as I am too busy to submit a claim.

TRAVELS
WE are taking a family holiday in June to Sydney and Uluru. It will be great! 3 nights in Sydney doing tyouristy things, then a 3 day camping safari around Uluru, The Olgas and King's Canyon. The family will then leave from Alice Springs while I stay there for a national conference. Its all good.

SILVER
Somehow it seems I will have been married for 25 years on May 5th. To the same man. Lucky, eh? Preparations abound for a celebratory dinner. Followed by our trip a few weeks later.

PHOTOS may follow for all the above, but right now I have to go to work. Which was evacuated a few nights ago due to a fire. I wasn't working, but it looked like a nightmare! I'll hear all about it today.

Its all go around here!

A week in dot points

• If you're looking for something midwife-y and moving today...sorry...I don't have much However.....I've seen some yummy babies born.
• Father's day was really lovely at both ends, with young Dads greeting their first-borns, along with both Grandads in the labour room until it got intense i.e. time for pushing...then I cheerfully turfed them out to the waiting room with a hearty "Its time to go guys, next time I see you it will be with congratulations!" They were quite happy to go, while the young Dad jigged with excitement by the woman's side. He was soooooo happy to be meeting his son, and his 19y.o. partner did a lovely job of pushing the baby out. Both so accepting of the role ahead, breastfeeding promptly, then taking the baby out to meet his two grandfathers on Father's Day. Really sweet.
• Night shift. The work is good, the staff are great, the workload ridiculous at times, with barely a lull in proceedings, (trying not to) rush from room to room, turning on the charm again and again to butter up a new room of folk, just waiting, waiting, trying not to make any promises one can't keep. Coping with emergencies. Hooley dooley, we had one really big one last weekend, there were just two midwives present and my colleague saved a woman's life, literally, with bimanual compression. She kept it up while I called in for help again after the initial stuff had seemed to work, then I lifted her onto the bed so it sould continue all the way to theatre. It was mind-boggling, but she survived. Its never dull in our place, but a bit more peace would be very welcome.
• At home, my daughter has now spent her second week home alone since her workplace closed unexpectedly. BUGGER! She had made such a lovely start and was really gaining confidence, now she is job-hunting again, back to filling in heaps of forms and getting to know a new bunch, and they her. Sigh. And she needs company alot so I am unable to get any time alone to craft etc. Sigh. It gives me cabin fever, but she suffers it too, especially when I am sleeping on night shift. Double sigh.
• My hubby has been unwell with a bad elbow joint, septic bursitis they are calling it. He was admitted to hospital for IV antibiotics yesterday and is now home, although the area of redness and swelling is re-growing (i think) since he came home. He still feels quite unwell, but as he hates hospitals with a passion he was very keen to be discharged. He unfortunately won't let me fuss over him too much, much as I want to. I hope he doesn't have to be re-admitted, cos that might mean surgery.
• While he was in hospital I got to visit a friend who has been in for a fortnight and I have barely been able to see her due to nightshift. She needs a bit of TLC, and I feel bad not being available to provide it except by text.
• While Don was being ferried back and forth and admitted etc, I took Steff to swimming, and then attended a fundraiser I had committed to helping with a month or more ago. My mind was not quite with it, I must confess.
• And then we (Steff and I) went out to my sister's for dinner. We had a roast which was very yummy, and Steff had made a dessert while Don was being diagnosed. My brother-in-law was disappointed to be missing his drinking buddy. I came home just after 9.30 and couldn't settle and went to bed way too late, sleeping heavily in the end alone in the bed.
• Don is home now, and still not terrific, but on oral antibiotics, and sleeping currently. We have made cake to feed to visitors who will NOT find him in hospital and will drop in at home. He most determinedly spent the day prowling around his garden, revelling in the sunshine, and now he is knackered. I'm off to take his temperature and be his nurse and give him drugs.
• Its been a strange weekend, after a lost week on nightshift.
• 
  Sorry about that. You can fill in the blanks....

Laying low

I am here, alive, just on night shift, and quite absorbed in the other doings of life.

Thankyou all so much for your kind words about my memories of my Dad. He was quite a man. I have enjoyed seeing that photo on my blog.

I am reading everyone else's blogs, dropping comments here and there, I just haven't had much chance to post as I am sharing the computer with the boy wonder currently as well. There's fierce competition.

What else have I been up to?

I have had a sister turn 40.

We have lost a dear cousin to lung cancer after a brief illness. As this branch of the family are Tassie there have been many phonecalls, and flowers sent, and notices lodged. It is not fair to lose such a lively witty man, who had such depths that he hid so readily. He follows his late son, his only child who died in a car crash about 15 years ago. He was loved by many.

Stephanie has finished work for now, as her site closed unexpectedly with short notice. She is now going to pursue open employment (gulp) as the alternative supported placements are probably not for her, sadly. We're all putting a brave face on it but it is disappointing after she was settling in so well and experiencing some success. The new phase involves MANY appointments, not always easy to fit in with shift work, or her Dad's work commitments.

I have worked 20 hours, and been flat tack with some very messy and tricky cases. Had a birth just in the nick of time 7 minutes before knock off yesterday morning, that kept me busy for a further hour or more. This was after a pretty torrid night, but we were grateful to see this baby and end his Mum's suffering ... she really suffered, quite unusually given the numbers of measures in place for her comfort, but it happens sometimes. Her little one really needed to be out for complicated reasons and finally he emerged in a fragile state, into the arms of paeds who resuscitated him very well and he is doing OK in the nursery where he can finish growing without relying on an abrupting placenta!

And today a new baby was born into the Tassie family, another grandchild to dear cousin Susan and her husband Richard, after the loss of her elder brother last week. They will welcome two more grandchildren by Xmas, one from each of their surviving 3 children. They too lost an adult daughter in a separate motorbike accident over a decade ago. They are stoic and brave, but I know they all miss seeing her become a parent along with her siblings.

Welcome to the world Abel Craig, named after your Mum's cousin. Babies are such a treasure.

And finally in the midst of it all I have been quite obsessed with playing Bejewelled Blitz on Facebook. It is VERY BAD. And VERY ADDICTIVE. The chink-chinking sound of the jewels clicking into place sends me into a trance and I spend waaaaay too much time developing RSI in my tapping-the-mousepad finger..... I am fairly disciplined with it, and set myself a time limit but I have been known to exceed it. I'm doing fairly well though....

Today I have been a housefrau staying in to see the refrigerator repair man...who informs me that I need a new fridge. When I think about it the old one is 21 years old! Its done very well, but I'm sure there are much more energy efficient ones available. We kind of chose one this evening, with a 5.5 star rating, but then came home to rearrange the kitchen a bit to accommodate it, so I'll go back and buy it for real tomorrow. Isn't my life scintillating?

Well, I'm off to bed, very late but I'm between night shifts and its barely worth retraining my body clock after 2 shifts on with 3 off before 4 more nights, so I've been staying up late. Sigh.

Thanks for feeding the fishies!

If it quacks like a duck...

THIS is the attention seeking duck. It quacked, and whined, and waddled up and down, and carried on until I took its photo and then it stopped. I'm not kidding. Go figure.

This the annoying, attention seeking duck's friend, who swam quietly without fuss. I took two photos of this one, to reward good behaviour.

This is what my husband insisted was a greater crested grebe.He vowed that it was really rare and we should take a photo of it. So I did. For posterity, in case it became extinct overnight. Funnily enough this 'grebe' had a lot of cousins in Stresa, and on the Borromeo islands.

This is a tree stump on Isola Bella. You can see the attraction, no?

And more of the gardens. You really musn't encourage me.

OK, I'll stop now. Genuine Paris photos next time.

Italy pics (image heavy)

Ooh, I have forgotten to post any photos from Italy or Paris. Italy first, starting in Milan. Here is the Duomo, that we so loved. Isn't it pretty? It looks like a piece of starched lace, it has such a lightness about it. Sadly the interior is quite gloomy and one can't take photos...ooops...how did those get there?

This is the Victor Emmanuel Galleria (with the McDs inside). It had the usual beautiful floors. Don despairs of me taking photos of ceilings and floors, but I am a slave to beauty.

We were in Milan for Fashion week. There were lots of Beautiful Young Things sloping about. Purple is very big at the moment, and even the men's shops were full of purple pants and shirts (and of course the usual Italian obsession with red pants, or mustard pants for men...shudder). You would have loved it, Stomper. We found supermarkets and ate al fresco and had a lovely dinner in a little restaurant. The clothing stores were many and varied, and they even had a big girls shop, but sadly we didn't have time, or room in the case. I survived.

Then off by train to Stresa. We skirted the mountains we had flown over the previous day and arrived at our little hotel, with a second floor walk-up room. It was really nice. This is the view from my pillow. It was Italy folks. Lago Maggiore was quite, quite lovely. There was a small chain of islands, the Borromeo islands near the shore at Stresa and we went over to them by water taxi on our last day. Just looking at them was really nice, especially in the dusk light. This is the restaurant cafe where I accessed the internet during my stay, and we had dinner there on the first night. It was delicious.

On my rambles around the town(s) I saw gorgeous stone walls and buildings. I saw really sweet lizards (Note, no lizards were licked to back this statement). I even found a junkyard that I itched to fossick in, but restrained myself, more from lack of sufficient Italian to explain myself as a junk obsessed Aussie whose Dad had a great shed, and how it makes me nostalgic for him ..... oh, and the suitcase thing. Sigh.

I had to amuse myself while hubby was away at his conference somehow! I took a cable car up a mountain. I saw enormous tadpoles in an alpine pond. I saw cows and goats in a forest from the air. I rested in a lakeside pirate cove with pretty stones.

The conference dinner was held in a lovely ballroom. See? I am in the pic somewhere. We came home to the news of Michael Jackson's death. Funny heh? The associations that we will always make with that night. I met some interesting people, ate from silver plates and had great food. The floorshow was an interesting piece of cabaret - a shadow maker who depicted famous people - so simple, so ... weird ... but very effective. Almost every photo from that night has a silver line across people's faces from flash bounceback off the silver plates. One of the unexpected drawbacks of wealth (cough) and privilege.

The next day we went to the islands. They were gorgeous. Of course. Interesting little winding streets, old, old buildings. One island, Isola Pescatori, had a cat sanctuary for homeless cats. We found this motheaten old moggy who looks like an older, sleeker version of our cat at home, Phoenix. Puss was nobly ignoring the taunts of these cheeky swallows. When you used the public loos the contributions went to support the cats.

The largest island, Isola Bella, had long been a playground for the rich and powerful. The Duke of Borromeo (or was he a bishop.... anyway), he had a palace on this island which was open to the public along with the very famous terraced gardens. The palace contained one level that was all 'underground' and stone covered, a grotto, for use in the summer. It still contained amazing pieces of sculpture. Napoleon slept in this bed. There was an enormous tapestry gallery. The amount of money to build this place must have been staggering. Mussolini has dined in the restaurants, along with many famous actors and even a Pope. The views from the gardens looked back towards the mainland and the village of Stresa. It was really pretty gorgeous, if a bit OTT Italian style. We were impressed, but cool about it.

Are you getting sick of photos yet? Sorry. It is very hard to whittle it all down. There were interesting things in many place: gardens, tree stumps, views, angles, attention-seeking ducks, inebriated husbands....I'll spare you that one, but I do have lots of photos of him hooting like a monkey.

Next time, Paris!

Wild weather = wild women

Its been a while since I showed you any Wild Women. Wanna see the latest batch?

My previous WW are found here and in mid-April archives. The latest girls have been a while coming as I have been quite stop/start with them.

Here is Nymph. You've met her before, but she got finished with some extra floral embroidery and is now ready to take off to her new home.

This is Regina. She is a queen of Rio, and dresses in the colours of the carnival.

Below is Minnie. She took her time to reveal herself, and was bald for quite some time. It didn't suit her. But when she claimed some sorbet-coloured locks she came alive. Her arms and legs are 'milagros' and have a lovely textureand she has vintage crochet lace as her skirt. I think she is doing the Twist.

This is Jaune. Someone I know is having a special birthday soon and guess where Jaune is going to live?

Finally, you have also seen this sweetie before but she was shy and hadn't told me her name yet. She has just whispered it to me...May I introduce Flora. She likes violets.

She was nervous for her close-up, but I think it turned out, don't you?

Cold off the press

WOW!!!!WOW!!!! There has just been the most incredible hailstorm come through here!

The front yard, looking toward the veggie patch

The back yard adrift.

I'm glad I'm not showering outside here today!
This is the back lane , with runoff through the drifts.

I can hear the little guy next door whooping in delight as he discovers another pile.

This is the neighbour's verge. Ice rinse for the washing, anyone?

Let's see if I can upload the footage I took of it hailing from the back door.

WOW!!!!! It happened nearly an hour ago and its still in drifts.(edited to add it lasted 7 hours, it has only just melted, but Don and Steff both got to see it when they came home)

I have never seen such a heavy hailstorm, I'm grateful there was no damage, as the hailstones themselves were not too big, but I'm glad I took photos.

And there's a bowl of it in the freezer!!!