The Business of Being Born!

Thank you Nick and Jamie for telling me about this wonderful film! I was so thrilled to see Ina May Gaskin and Michel Odent in this film. I was thrilled beyond belief to see a documentary that says EVERYTHING that women need to hear about birth and medicine. It talks about everything I used to teach in my childbirth classes. I became a nurse to become a midwife. In the end I left obstetrical nursing because I just felt like it was such a losing battle against the medical model. Yet even so I still feel very passionate these issues and am so thrilled that some people are still carrying the torch. I hope some day that the U.S. will get back on track with the way births are meant to be. We need to take birth away from medicine!! The Business of Being Born a film EVERY WOMAN should see.

Lonely!

Well Martin has been gone since Monday and won't return until Saturday. He's in Las Vegas at an RV convention thingy. He's having a great time. I'm here spending my time reading and writing for school and trying to prepare this Sunday's Relief Society lesson. Yep, that's my new calling - I'm teaching "Teaching for Our Times." Teaching RS was one of my favorite callings so I'm happy to be doing it again and I confess I'm happy for a once a month calling. This Sunday's lesson starts out by referring to the "light of Christ" and I've just totally gone off now on this tangent about what exactly is that light that proceeds from the presence of God and fills everything. If the glory of God is intelligence or in other words light and truth then I reason that light is intelligence from the presence of God. My ideas are half formed but moving in that direction and I'm interested to see exactly where it takes me. Go ahead and chime in if you have thoughts about it.

So, school. It's a lot of work. It is also mostly thus far about healthcare as an enterprise and that is not really a subject I am particularly interested in, however as I participate in these discussions, it certainly becomes slightly more interesting. Still, while I see the value of having this information instilled in doctorally prepared nurse practitioners, I don't particularly see the value of having it instilled in ME. I'm taking it one semester at a time. But I will say that there are other things that I should be doing: like exercising, and quilting, that are sitting on the back burner.

Speaking of quilting, I received an email from Mary Lou. She wants ALL of my storyquilts for the next book (no, I'm not being singled out for honors, she's asking all the "Asilomar" quilters for their storyquilts.) I need to fill out release forms. I've written to Rich Wyler to see if he's willing to share Might Marie (aka Marie the Mighty) and I'll need to ask Carolyn if she'll share Sailing On. Natalie and Chelsea I hope you'll shareI Do It and I am Not a Wimp as well. She also wants Puppy Love, but I haven't quite finished it. Nana In Waitingkind of pulled me off that track and now I need to get back on it to finish it in the next couple of weeks. And I haven't even thought about the TWO quilt ideas I have for my soon to be born grandson!

And speaking of grandsons, I told Nick the other day that if he calls people, the first words out of his mouth must be "no she isn't in labor" before he can go one because everyone will be waiting for THE call and me personally will be holding my breath until he gets to the point!! And of course neither he nor Jamie should go anywhere without a cell phone which they can immediately answer, or people will be calling Cedars-Sinai. But seriously Nick, it isn't that I'm not thrilled for your upcoming interview in Boston for the New England College of Optometry. Well, let me say not totally thrilled because I don't want you moving there. But thrilled for the honor of it :) (I know you are thinking exasperatedly "MOMS!"}

Carolyn: Haven't heard from her in two weeks and I'm worried. She's probably out of town and somehow that fact escaped me. But I'm still worried. I've emailed and telephoned. This makes me aware that I have no other contact information for her. When I finally do hear from her, I will ask her for a name and number.

Work is another subject and speaking of it now, I realize I'm going to be late so I better end here. Just know that I'll be meeting with another NP from the Ventura area who might have a job proposal for me and I just might be thinking about it . . .

9/11

I was just reading Heather Johnson's blog entry about September 11th and it really stirred up my memories of that day and the days that followed. While I am certainly not as eloquent, I will write what I remember: I was sleeping and the phone rang. It was Natalie calling me from Logan, Utah and saying "Mom, are you awake? Turn on the TV, someone has just attacked the Pentagon!" I asked her "Are we at war?" and she replied "I think maybe so." It absolutely terrified me. When I turned on the TV, I couldn't make sense of the images and stories. News people were all excited, there were images of the Twin Towers, there was fire and smoke and I couldn't really comprehend it. Where was the Pentagon? What were they saying? What was happening? I don't know how many minutes I sat there before my mind began to make some kind of sense of the images and sounds, and even then I could not comprehend it. And I couldn't leave the television. I was glued to it. All I could think about was my son was in a foreign country (Venezuela) and my daughter was in Utah, and it appeared that something horrific was occurring. It was much worse than the Oklahoma City bombing, whatever it was, and that had been awful. The nurse in me wanted to DO something, but I couldn't imagine what that would be. Some of the most enduring and terrifying images for me over the next days, weren't of the rubble, but of the lines of gurneys and waiting hospital personnel and NO PATIENTS!!

But I agree with the marine Heather quotes in her blog. The most amazing memory of all came the next day, and the weeks and months following that. The incredible rush of patriotism, the American flag flying everywhere, the immediate sense of community. Everywhere I went, everyone I spoke with or interacted with was simply kinder, gentler, almost reverent. Not just people in my classes or at church, but the guy at the drive through window at McDonalds, the people driving on the freeways, EVERYONE! The shared grief made us value each other more as Americans and as human beings. There was love in the air. It came from each of us and from all over the world. This is a lesson I wish had not dimmed from our memories so quickly.