Dear Mum, Dear friend, Sylvia, It’s been 8 years today since you died. In some ways time has been fleeting and in other ways time has been long, drawn-out, a lifetime. Your death anniversaries have brought with it many shades of emotions. The first year and I was in shock, I felt numb and threw…
New mothers: What does support look like during a pandemic?
These have been trying times. It is with disbelief that I watch the global covid-19 pandemic unfold. I cannot quite grasp the reality of this virus, the implications upon the worlds population, the dramatic affect on how I need to live, day by day. I have both recently and in the past, reflected a great…
The impending motherhood “to-do” list. Step 1: set up community.
Life can at times feel like one long to-do list. I feel like I live in a society where a great focus is spent on taking action and filling up days with activities. There are so many moments of stimulation, of attending events, of maintaining life admin. The “to-do” list seems endless and my need…
Searching for my mother. A pregnant woman’s journey.
My greatest pregnancy challenge by far has been re-visiting the loss of my mother. I knew this process was pending long before I fell pregnant, an inevitable study I would one day take amidst a time that pressed close examination of motherhood. Yet the great depth of this grief could not have been apparent until…
Pregnancy anger: Observing the wild fire within
Anger is a strong emotion, one that can be hard to sit with and also challenging to hold space for. Anger is generally not welcomed amongst the wider community, it is not ‘nice’ and often comes from a place of soul-fire. As a woman, anger has been a sometimes-visitor amidst my hormonal menarche dance and…
Pubic symphysitis- relaxin’ into the pregnant pelvis
Hormones go wild in pregnancy. They take over the body in weird and most glorious ways that can be both alarming and disarming. The body undergoes incredible changes some obvious and some hidden and some that creep up on you all of sudden. At 20 weeks gestation my body seemed to have some kind of…
Spotting in pregnancy and the deep fear of loss
Blood tends to indicate that something is wrong. Blood is often startlingly red, an alarm system of the body showing something on the outside that is generally kept on the inside. There is an intimacy in blood, an exposure, a level of vulnerability. As a midwife I see a great deal of blood, particularly in…
Morning Sickness and a bad case of the “shoulds”.
Should is a word my mother recommended I delete from my vocabulary. It’s a word that implies maybe I don’t want to, perhaps I’m not even going to or actually I’m totally unable to, despite feeling that it would be right to do even though I kinda, really don’t want to/can’t. I guess I could…
midwife to mother
It’s been 18 months since I last wrote. I’ve had a serious case of writers block. My muse just got up and walked away. In my muse’s place came a gorgeous man. A wonderful, tall, loving Scotsman who swept me off my feet and surrounded me with joy and laughter and love, a truly, deeply,…
The grandmother project
Midwives within the public health setting have a series of questions we ask women when they come in for their first ‘booking-in’ pregnancy appointment with us. These questions look at how likely a women is to develop postnatal depression based on her mental health history, her relationship with her partner and her support networks in…
Nurturing the child within
It is not uncommon in my practice as a midwife to hear of the struggles of pregnancy. Contrary to popular belief, pregnancy is not always a journey of unconditional glowing radiance. Many challenges can arise within the pregnant state from the intense rollercoaster of hormone-driven emotions to the ongoing visceral and tender aches and pains,…
Sylvia and her 66th year
Today is my mothers birthday. She would have been 66 years old and I imagine had she been alive, she would have danced and smiled and laughed and embraced and felt joy at life’s precious moments. Today I set off on a holiday overseas. I will pass by three time zones on this very day…
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