This week began in admissions. I was able to do insert a cannula, take blood pressures, and do my first vaginal examination on a woman before she was fully dilated. I love admissions because I’m constantly asked to do things that give me butterflies and make my hands clam up instantly. The labour room has slowly but surly become a “comfortable place”. I still get surges of anxiousness and energy pounding through my body when I am about to do a delivery, but it’s different, it’s more familiar. Where as in admissions I am doing things I haven’t gotten to do as regularly as deliveries. Like assessing a pelvis for delivery, or checking dilation of a cervix. It is wonderful to feel so vulnerable, so hungry to learn, and instantly humbled. After I finished my examination, I told the doctor my “findings”, she had recorded the same. I was amazed, I did it. The rest of the afternoon consisted of Shannon delivering a baby on one of the back beds smashed against the wall. Meanwhile, the doctor and I where struggling to get a cannula in this woman’s arm. To picture this properly, you need to imagine a tiny, four foot something woman, with dark skin, and big white teeth squirming, kicking, flailing her arms any and every direction they would fly. So, finding a vein, and inserting a needle into this vein was no easy task. The doctor successfully got it in, and walked away to accomplish a task more important, leaving me to secure the cannual in place. “Plaster! Plaster!” I yelled to the student nurses indicating I needed some tape. They sweetly ran off in all directions to meet my request. I watched as the newly inserted cannula flailed every which way along with this tiny, brown arm. The small plastic tube in her vein began to slowly creep out. I caught her arm in mid swing, and held on with all my strength. “Mama, mama!” A student nurse handed me the tape, I tried desperately to secure the cannula, as I did this I peered through her legs to see the baby’s head half out. The cannula seemed like the last thing I should be concerned about. But, I taped it down none the less, real tight. A baby girl was born only seconds later, tiny just like her mother. The woman tore, not surprisingly, as she was so tense and kicking every which way. I was asked to suture. Now, this was my third time suturing, and to be honest it hasn’t quite grown on me. I hear it only gets better with experience, and even becomes enjoyable once you get the hang of how to hold and maneuver everything, but for now, it makes me sweat. I felt more pressure in admissions to accomplish this quickly as beds are in much more need in admissions than they are in the labour room. I stitched and stitched, and stitched. Finally, I was finished, and I was humbled. There is nothing like suturing to remind you that you are still but a student.

Tuesday on prayer team, Shannon and I bought oranges and gave them to beggars on the way to the hospital, and gave candy canes sent in a Christmas package to Becca to little street kids. For a moment, I felt like we were all the same, and as if, the next time I was begging, they would do the same for me. For a moment, I understood family, I understood community. For a moment I realized that we are apart of something so much greater than what we currently understand, and I was blessed.

Wednesday I was in the Newborn Room, where I held and prayed for heaps of babies. I have grown to really enjoy washing, drying, and talking to these babies, untouched by the things of this world. I asked one what it was like, to know purity. They are so soft, each one so different, yet so much the same. There were a few stillborns, born earlier in the day, kept in trays on the ground as they usually are. The only difference from these in my arms to these on the ground was the breath of life. The mystery of life overwhelmed my mind as I bathed new life after new life. At four o’clock, right as our shift was ending, I delivered my 16^th baby. William Christopher. I fell in love with him, I felt as if I could never put him down. We ended up staying at the hospital till 7 o’clock that evening. The other girls got two deliveries each, in three hours. I probably could have gotten more as well, as they seemed to be popping out in every direction, but I felt so sure that I was to focus solely on my woman, and baby, devoted to perfect monitoring and paperwork. This was possible, but not without constant interruption, a madam yelling at me for a cannula, “blood pressure here, blood pressure there, a baby is coming here, a baby is coming there, Sina’s got a delivery, Tina’s got a delivery, there’s babies that need bathing in the new born room…” I would glance at a clock every now and then to find that the 15 minute intervals in which I was to be monitoring my patients had long expired. For the first time in my life, I thought I’d like to work in an emergency room. I left the hospital that day beaming. This is life.

I’m not sure what the future holds, whether I’ll be delivering babies for the rest of my life, or just for the next three months. No matter what the outcome, I feel as though I will be a midwife forever. I feel as though I am a part of this beautiful mystery shared between women all over the world. Whether or not I continue on the road to getting certified doesn’t affect the fact that in these past 8 months I have become a part of something that has changed me. I have seen enough miracles to last a life time, the miracle of life. And I am forever changed.