FM Weekly 4.14

7 May 2023

Dear readers: I was traveling last week and unexpectedly came down with a horrid sinus infection, the combination of which meant that somehow I lost track of days and completely forgot to send the newsletter! This week will feature an especially long reflection, to cover what I’ve been thinking about between the National Abortion Federation conference and the American College of Nurse-Midwives conference, two scripts, and an abbreviated version of the news due to space limitations I am unable to control. I’ll be back in regular action next week! 

Happy happy belated International Day of the Midwife to you all! I realize that often the only folks I hear celebrating one another during this day are fellow midwives, and just in case you didn’t hear it or didn’t hear it enough, I am shouting it from the rooftops right this very moment: 

You are a midwife! Being a midwife is one of the most important and beautiful and powerful and heartbreaking and heartexpanding things we can possibly do! Whatever midwifery is and means and looks like to you is worth celebrating!!! 

Lately, I’ve noticed that I still use the collective “we” when I talk about midwifery care. “We” practiced by… Or “We” offered patients xyz… In these circumstances, “We” referred to, presumably, myself and my midwifery colleagues. But in reality, since we were a collaborative practice, “we” also referred to the OBGYNs and nurses in our group. At any point in time in my practice, either over text or page or phone call, my own practice was uplifted and augmented by a lot of passionate and smart and trusted midwifery and physician and nursing colleagues.

Wait, though, because even that framing isn’t entirely true. As a free clinic provider, the “we” more accurately referred also the family practice and pediatric MDs and NPs in our clinic system. Again though that isn’t entirely true, because the brilliant residents, as well as nursing, midwifery, and medical students working with me contributed significantly to my and our ideas and practice, so they’re included, too, in the “we.” The “we” is a clinical one, to refer to the collective team. 

At its most honest, though, when I pause to think about the “we,” I become emotional. At its rawest, “we” is about myself and the patient. There was no care I offered nor decision made without intentional partnership with those for whom I was honored to provide care. There’s a highlight reel of their laughter and tears and faces, a soundtrack of their children and their loved ones in the background, a video compilation of our telehealth connections, a photo montage of births and hugs and hello’s that compose a symphony within the  word “we.” In my life right now, not in clinical practice, the “we” surfaces all the goodbyes I said when I left, and in its own way is my emotional inability to let that goodbye be permanent.