Of all the Nonesuch

One of my continuity of care clients came in to clinic today with her two-week-old baby. Being slightly less busy than normal, I took two moments to stop in the waiting room and talk to her. She's looking bright and cheery... and dreadfully suspicious. I ask her how breastfeeding is going. "Oh," she says. "I'm not nursing anymore."

 

My jaw is clenched too tightly to hit the floor. Three housecalls. THREE HOUSECALLS we made to aid her in nursing her baby, her own pigheadedness foiling our best attempts to help. Five days ago we dropped in to ensure everything was going well, and were met by a happy smile and a baby who was no longer starving. "It's going beautifully," she assured us from her rocking chair, beaming.

 

And now this. Five days later she walks through the clinic door and informs me that she's quit nursing for good. "I pumped for a few days and just didn't have enough milk, so I decided I just can't do it with this baby. Maybe another baby." 

 

I am chewing on my tongue to keep from saying exactly what is exploding in supernovas through my head. You are obnoxious. If you'd have listened when we told you that you'd have to work at building up your milk supply and getting your nipple-confused baby back to the breast... if you'd have come to childbirth classes when we pleaded with you instead of smiling and assuring us your sisters all got by with nothing of the sort... if you'd have done what we said when we came out to your house instead of diagnosing the baby with a fingernail clippers on a string and proceeding to shake the kid silly because "she's gone and come down with pneumonia"... If you hadn't starved your baby for the first week of life because you couldn't take advice from your midwife and just had to take it from yourself - !

 

There are days when I drink coffee to stay awake, and there are days when I drink coffee so that something hot is going down to my stomach and not coming up into someone's face. Today is one of the latter.

 

For further measure I pop horehound cough drops into my mouth - three in a row - and retreat to the back of the room, after I beg the assistance of our lactation consultant. "Amy, can I have you? /Please/?" This is beyond me.

 

There are days, too, when I wonder why I'm a student midwife and not a full-time novelist. I sit on the exam table and the client sits on the chair across from me while I consider retiring from apprenticeship and making a profession out of my pen. Blimey! If only I could.

 

The cough drops work wonders. My TMJ keeps me from opening my mouth to snap around the hard candy, so I am effectively silenced. This pleases me. My brain was getting tired of keeping my lips closed.

 

It takes twice the time of her scheduled appointment to persuade her to keep on with breastfeeding, and even then no one is sure that she actually acknowledged anything we said. After clinic is over we sit around the kitchen table and discuss the possibility that she has pospartum depression, and is quitting breastfeeding because that's easier than relinquishing her cocky attitude to admit she needs help. While talking, I update my counts and realize that I'm almost finished with the documented clinical portion of my apprenticeship. I just need to be primary attendant at seven more births, and perform eight newborn exams and eight postpartum exams. Oh yes. And study for the skills and knowledge portion of the NARM exam.

 

We settle that the lactation consultant is going to visit her home for weekly check-ups, in order to track the baby's weight gain and ensure that breastfeeding is going well.

 

Outside, it's begun to sleet. I log onto Skype for a few minutes of conversation before heading home. Across the table, my preceptor and coworker are discussing the itinerary for the upcoming conference on breech birth. My preceptor is speaking there on breech complications, and she needs help in organizing her presentation. I, being tired, do not volunteer. Instead, I go and bring up her van.

 

Once home I inspect my word count for NaNoWriMo and realize that I am probably going to fail miserably despite my efforts. This irks me. To console myself I memorize the word of the day - nonesuch. Noun. A person or thing that has no equal.

 

It describes my continuity of care client perfectly. She is a nonesuch.

 

I go grimly to writing.

Insomnia

There is no better time to update a blog than when you need an excuse to procrastinate.

 

Yes, I should be sleeping. It happens that my days and nights are upended, and I can't. This has something to do with the fact that the hours between eleven pm and four am are silent hours.

 

Yes, I should be writing. Unfortunately, my capacity for NaNo-ing is limited at two in the morning. I can manage pseudo-ninja scribbling on sleep, but not when I'm so exhausted that my brain is dwindling into a moronic fog.

 

My word quota is filled for these first two days; certainly not in excess. I'm managing the minimum word count for each day so far, and if I keep up that routine for the next twenty-eight days I will be satisfied. After all, I'm doing this in bits and pieces - three hundred words here, two sentences here. I can manage a hundred words a minute, provided I write with no distractions and no interference from my dear little editor. That means that 50K in a month /is/ possible, even working full time and studying for a certain monumental exam.

 

I slept last night from three-thirty to six on a reclining chair in a house I'd never seen. Periodic episodes of noisy vomiting (coming from the other room) roused me. When I woke up, I studied Japanese, particularly differentiating between participles /wa/ and /ga/. The rest of the morning was spent in aiding with the delivery of a baby, where I was primary attendant [under supervision]; when she came, she breathed well, but stayed completely floppy for almost ten minutes. In attending over one hundred births I had never seen such a happening. I made a note to look up oxygen deprivation and neonatal depression in the near future.

 

Towards evening I slept a bit, thanks to a mandate from the Head of the Household. At nine I woke up; at eleven I crept downstairs. I finished my word quota at twelve thirty.

 

I am now listening to Sara Bareilles singing "King of Anything". (You sound so innocent, all full of good intent; swear you know best. ... You've got the talking down, but not the listening...) When it is finished I'll wake up my feet, look up a vocabulary word to text my cousin in the morning, and list gift projects in the order they must be completed. Oh. And record that song for Wain, so I can post the link along with the poem.

 

In the morning I'll attempt to sleep.

 

Procrastination is a lovely thing.