La sexta semana/The sixth week Part I

¡Buenas tardes! It's a cloudy afternoon here in El Paso (July is the "rainy" season, which generally amounts to a lot of surrounding clouds and lightning, but no rain) and I am sitting at my usual table in the laundromat with a nice view of the tiny spots of green on the mostly sandy Franklin Mountains. I cannot believe how quickly this week has gone by! I knew the July session would be busier with shifts closer together, class twice a week, and keeping up with fieldnotes and personal matters somewhere in there, but I didn't know it would be so fast. Flying back into El Paso on Sunday, I felt a lot different than when I first arrived in June and had a better feeling in general about how my last four weeks here would go. On Monday, I was a bit worried in the morning when some of those lonely feelings came back, but once I went to class on Normal Postpartum and saw everyone again, it faded away. I enjoyed our Normal Postpartum class, especially since I will be learning how to do PP citas sometime soon and it will really round out the spectrum of care I can provide to the clients.

This week, I had my shifts on Tuesday and Friday (this session I will stop having shifts every Tuesday and Saturday like in June because I am on in the clinic every third day, which will give me experience working all days of the week, except for Wednesdays, for some reason) and did two interviews with students on Wednesday. On Thursday, we had a four hour class on Normal Newborn Adaptation, which was difficult because we learned all about the fetal circulatory system (Anatomy and Physiology, you would have been so helpful) and everyone's energy was really draining and tense due to the long class. On Saturday, I worked on writing up fieldnotes and catching up with some family and friends, but was so tired from my shift on Friday, that I worked pretty slowly. The demands of being a student and researcher are tough, especially when you've been up for nearly 40 hours!

Today, I finished up my fieldnotes from Tuesday and after doing my laundry (I just realized the detergent didn't dispense into one of them until 9 minutes were left in the cycle, so I may have to do some repeat washing, which is unfortunate since these washers only have 27 minute cycles for $2.50!), I will go to Mercado Mayapan with one of the housekeepers from MLL. She is so kind to me and always hugs and kisses me on the cheek when we see one another in the morning. She is a hard worker and I have a lot of respect for her. The theme at MM this month is Oaxaca and the mariachis always play on Sundays, so we'll enjoy eating and listening to them later this afternoon.

I apologize for not having many new pictures on this blog post! I have taken a lot of pictures of the clinic and school, but have very few of students because we don't have much time to take photos together and I am not sure how they would feel being posted on the blog, which I would need to mention to them. I would like to start trying for some pictures with students and plan to visit Mesilla and Las Cruces on this upcoming Friday or Saturday to get some presents for everyone back home, so hopefully there will be more to share! I've included photos that I haven't already, but they are from places that I have already visited, like the Franklin Mountains, and I've included some from inside the casita. Have a great week, everyone!

Tuesday, July 6

I had told both Sam and my mom that I hoped my first shift back wouldn't be too busy, especially not like the last Saturday I had worked, just so that I could adjust and get back in the groove again, and fortunately, the day was muy tranquilo (very calm). I only did two citas today and one of them was a postpartum in which I was shadowing and helping translate/interpret. And there were no births! We all joked that everyone had come in during the last two weekends (which were extremely busy) and that the energy around the lunar eclipse had brought everyone during that busy time. Since there were no citas waiting for the first hour/hour and a half we were there, I went to the hospital to visit some of our clients who had been transferred there with another student. I had not been to the hospital (for doula work) since February and had only visited a woman from the APPLES office in May and I can't believe how different it felt to be back there after having been in a birth center for five weeks. I distinctly felt like there was a barrier between not only the student, me, and the clients, but also the technology and ideology of hospital births. The interaction between the clients and us was strained and awkward (granted, I had not met two of the three before and they were likely on or had been on medications) and all I could think about was that the majority of women were giving birth in an environment that felt sterile and cold (at least in my opinion) and was driven by hospital protocols and technology rather than women's autonomous decision making. This was especially apparent when I saw a woman walking down the hall with IV tubing taped to her hand and all of our clients had this, as well, and when we went to check on a woman who was in the bathroom and the nurse opened the door for us to speak with her without asking the woman if that was okay with her (the student immediately closed the door when this happened). It was interesting to note the level of authority we had wearing our scrubs, as well, and how no one questioned from where we had come or why we were there because we blended in with the nurses and doctors. It was so different returning to the hospital after not being there for so long and having seen how care can be during pregnancy and birth with midwives at a birth center. I am grateful for the care hospitals can provide, especially in emergency situations and with serious illnesses, but this is not my view of birth, especially after seeing it in a more home-like setting.

Once we returned to the clinic, an initial was waiting and I decided to do her initial hopefully in time before Birth Talks began at 1pm. I had a pretty bad headache, perhaps due to a combination of jet lag, dehydration, and feeling so strange in the hospital, and I had the chance to take some Tylenol, snack on some pumpernickel bread (I feel like I eat constantly at the center, anytime I have a break), wash some dishes, and drink some water before beginning her initial at 11. What really stood out to me during this initial was that the client came with her suegra (mother-in-law) and she told me her mother was muy enfadada (very angry) she was pregnant at her age (I believe she was 18 or 19, which is a very common age for our first-time moms). Side note: I just noticed it smells like rain and it is indeed raining outside! The client told me she was excited about the pregnancy, though, despite experiencing a lot of ascos y mareos (morning sickness), which made sense because she was only 9 weeks into her pregnancy, because both of her sisters had had uterine complications and wouldn't be able to have any more children. I validated her excitement and she said her mom would probably come around to it soon. I am always grateful when clients confide in us about their feelings towards their pregnancy, why they chose to come to MLL, and their past experiences with trauma or abuse because I feel that MLL can serve as a safe haven for them to discuss and process what they're feeling, but feel that our support only goes so far because we often see different women depending on what day we're working and we can't change family dynamics or what's happening in Juárez. One of the midwives made a comment either today or sometime recently (or maybe I read it somewhere) that midwives were not psychologists and I find it difficult not to counsel or feel that I can help in some way, but discussing and processing is important, too, and at least we can do that together. Since this post is already pretty long, I'll continue the rest of Tuesday and Saturday on Part II!