Filed under: Uncategorized
My friend Bethany is doing mission work in Zimbabwe with her husband and two little boys for the next six weeks. So impressive! Her youngest is Flannery’s age. We can barely get out the door to go to the zoo today, and they are in Africa. It certainly puts things into perspective.
While Bethany is gone she asked some friends to do guest posts on her blog. Today she posted something that I wrote on working in Labor and Delivery. It was actually a very challenging assignment for me. There is a reason I never write about it on my own blog! I have so much to say on so many different aspects of my job that it’s hard to narrow it down to a blog post. I wrote a few other things while working on this for Beth that I may post soon. For now, here is the link to her blog: Still in St Louis.
This is what I wrote:
I am a Labor and Delivery nurse at a hospital in Seattle. With childbirth comes choice, and therefore, controversy. Whether home or hospital, medicated or non-medicated, doctor or midwife, we can all find a common ground when focusing on the outcome instead of the method.
The ultimate goals of a birth should be first, a healthy mom and babe, followed closely by a happy mom and babe. Thankfully, there are countless deliveries at both home and hospital that succeed in these goals. However, there are also those that fail, and the outcome can be emotionally and physically devastating.
My concern with hospital births is that they can sway too far towards healthy and away from happy, while homebirths can sway too far towards happy and away from healthy. As with much in life, it is difficult to keep a balance.
So what does that mean for me? I have no ambition to reform the birth profession. I wish. I barely have the ambition to go to work for my one scheduled shift a week. However, I do have the ambition to accomplish the goal of healthy and happy mom and baby for each and every one of my patients. It is my duty, my purpose, and my passion. But what a task that can be!
I feel blessed by my job. It challenges me intellectually and emotionally. It allows me the flexibility to be home with my daughter. It pays the bills. But my job isn’t about me – and that is what so many people in this profession often forget. It is about the families that are forming, the lives emerging and the lives that will be forever changed. It is about those moments in time that will never be forgotten. And hopefully, that is something we can all agree on.
1 Comment so far
Leave a comment
[...] birth stories in this book. Also, with this pregnancy I really appreciated what two other ladies, Brenna and Sarah, have to say about [...]
Pingback by Second birth story | Bliss and the Battlefield July 31, 2011 @ 9:04 pm