I had been signed off on the clinical skills of vital signs, including blood pressure, urinalysis, palpation (feeling the baby) and auscultation (listening to the baby's heartbeat) already in the lab at uni, yet there was no opportunity for me to practice that day. I listened with a pinnards stethoscope placed by the midwife twice, and I think that's it. There was a reason though - many of the women had either another student doing continuity of care with them, or a complication that prevented me from being able to practice on them. I tried my best to remind myself, this is their experience, not mine!
I was there to learn and learn I did! Each woman had left a piece of them with me in the room that day - a traumatic past birth, a struggle to quit smoking, a story of postnatal depression. By the end of the day exhaustion washed over me - mental and emotional, from a very long day learning how to be a midwife.
My second day in antenatal clinic, I arrived feeling nervous, begging the universe not to give me another busy day where I would not be able to practice my skills. The universe provided. It was a day of booking in appointments. Much calmer than the first day and despite my initial nerves, the midwife (a different one this time) soon made me feel at ease. I took blood pressures, palpated pregnant bellies, listened to the miraculous canter of the fetal heart with the doppler. By the end of the day, I was on our database, running a booking in appointment on my own, providing women with antenatal education and feeling totally in my element. My arms had come unbound, and with deep, sure strokes, I had learned to swim!
