The Other Side of the World: Mar 3, 2006

Friday, March 03, 2006

Meet Your Student Midwife

This is the photo I ended up using for my Midwifery placement profile. You know, the one they give to all the midwives and pregnant women, and their families. The one that they peer deeply into the (glossy paper) eyes of and thereby determine if you will fit into their deeply personal and intimate event. What criteria for a digital camera and a short arm to deal with! Actually, I asked my housemate if he thought it was ok (he said it looked a little odd) and then my Midwifery placement co-ordinator saw it and said "what a great photo". So, here's to hoping it's not one of those Durian-like love/hate black/white scenarios. Ahem. Not to obsess over a photo of myself or anything. What I am actually meant to be talking about is how my first week of school is now over. In all honesty, school is still school. It hurts your brain, and your bum to sit in class for 5 hours a day. I am still squirmy in my seat, resorting to permajeanandsweatshirt, sleepy as I read my dead-rainforest's worth of readings and I still hate getting up in the morning. But, somehow you don't notice these things so much when you're surrounded by a group of women who are quickly finding their way from 17 astoundingly different backgrounds to the heart of something we all want very much. Yesterday we sat in a happy clump during a break in our Human Development class (shared with other courses/departments) and laughed as people kept coming by and asking "So, why midwifery?". We looked at each other - the South African mother of teenagers, the triathlete with two toddlers, the former body-piercer, the family planning counsellor from Hawai'i - and expressed how subtle and pervasive the reasons for being here were. And then gratefully basked in our shared understanding that we could all speak to that question for hours, and yet no explanation would quite reach the true answer we all carry inside us.