P*rn for Midwives

I recently celebrated a birthday and Joe gifted me with a 19th century copy of "Aristotle's Masterpiece: Directions for Midwives, Counsel and Advice to Child-Bearing Women".

I'd never heard of the work, but I have a fascination with old obstetrical texts and instruments, so it was a very thoughtful gift. I have yet to read through much of it, but as I was trying to discover the publication date (it's not printed anywhere in the book itself) I ran across this description of the book at http://www.exclassics.com/arist/ariintro.htm:

"Aristotle's Masterpiece, a manual of sex and pregnancy, first saw the light of day about 1680. It is not, of course, the work of the ancient Greek philosopher, but its true authorship is unclear: the name of William Salmon has been suggested. Other works by the same or other hands were accreted to the original "Masterpiece" until by about 1735 the four parts here published made up the canon. Banned in Britain until the 1960's, it nonetheless has had a long but mostly clandestine career as a quasi-pornographic book. Grubby copies were produced in back-street printers, sold in rubber-goods shops or Holywell Street, and passed from hand to hand until they disintegrated. Many young boys got their first inklings of sex from it. It was also sometimes given by their mothers to women about to get married; the effect it had on the mind of a virgin bride can only be conjectured. It has been read (or at any rate mentioned) by James Joyce, William Carleton, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess and many others, and probably has had more influence than is realized. "

Exciting, no?

Though I am beginning to wonder what some of those stains are...

[Sorry, no photos, I can't seem to get the photo editor to work.]

Some key quotes:

"Keep the urine of the woman close in a glass for three days, and then strain it through a fine linen cloth; if you find small living creatures in it she hath conceived."

"Now, in the act of conception, there must be an agent and patient; for if they be both every way of one constitution, they cannot propagate...he is the agent, she the patient or weaker vessel, that she should be subject to the office of the man."

"A woman, after conception, during the time of her being pregnant, out to be looked upon as indisposed or sick, though in good health; for child-bearing is a kind of nine months' sickness, being all that time in expectation of many inconveniences..."

(I think it goes without saying that the author was definitely a man, and most certainly NOT a midwife.)

Wood

5 years.

5 years ago today (well, technically yesterday, as it is 4 minutes past the hour), Joe and I stood on the bank of a rushing river in front of our families - blood and otherwise - and promised to nurture the love that drew us all there that day for as long as it would bring joy, comfort and inspiration to ourselves and each other.

Tonight we returned to the place that we used to celebrate our dating anniversary and, while gorging ourselves on fine Italian food and wine, we discussed (among other things) what it meant to stay or delay some dreams in order to fulfill another. We talked about how people who witness a partnership from the outside might see compromise as sacrifice but that, when it is right, it is less a change in direction than a kind of natural curve in a path that - from further back - only ever had the appearance of being straight.

While we had started out talking about someone else's relationship it was not long before we were both knew that we were talking about our own. I was struck by how matter-of-factly we could hold this discussion and it reminded me how lucky I was to be sharing marriage and parenting with the person who is also my best friend in life. I know that sounds so cliché, but it really is true.

When we first met, Joe had expressed a desire to go on to hone his chops in New York City and I was returning to university in the fall. I was convinced that our summer romance was to go no further than that. Joe thought otherwise. He was convinced that we could maintain a long distance relationship, that it would not be simply an exercise in frustration, but I disagreed.

I recall standing in a friend's kitchen, shortly after Joe and I had started dating, and talking through these things with her. I glanced at a card she had framed and hung on her wall; it was Picasso's sketch of Don Quixote riding on his swaybacked nag, Rozinante. Quixote, in his madness, believed Rozinante to be as fine a horse as any and I felt a sort of kinship with her, burdened with trying to shoulder his dreams and his delicate sanity at the same time.

I had a flash of inspiration and I went home and wrote a poem for Joe. For me. For our (I believed) fleeting time together. Five years later, and five years ago today, I gifted Joe with a large framed reprint of Picasso's Don Quixote.

I've shared a stanza of that poem here in the past but was too insecure about the quality of the remainder to publish it. But for Joe, today on our five year wedding anniversary, I am posting it in its entirety. For Joe, because somehow he has drawn me into collusion in his madness. For ten years, and running.

Rozinante

"a horse before or above all the vulgar breed of horses in the world"
~Miguel Cervantes~

...a strong and steady steed.
i am not.
my weak legs
made weaker still
by the impression
your body has already left.
my spine curved
from the weight of your dreams.

still.
your faith would move
redwoods,
leave them uprooted
and struggling for
the kiss of the wind.

how many hours
of good do i have
left to give to you?

and should i fail,
is eternity then - shattered -
a glass pool of distorted
images and sound?

heart's blood.
pace quickening.
joy.

who am i to offer
just this for your journey?

Friday Night's Alright* (Updated Below)

This is odd.

It's a Friday night and I'm home. Joe has a gig. It's after 8:00 and the house is quiet. I have a few tasks to do and I'm procrastinating online.

None of which is out of the ordinary.

What is out of the ordinary is that there is a very noticeable absence in the bedroom upstairs. I am not home this Friday night, as I so often am, as the sole caregiver while my musician husband is working his second (chronologically, first in his heart) job.

This is an experiment.

Come January, I will be starting my practical training as a midwife which means that I will be on call basically 24/7 for four full months. Joe can't give up his music and we likely won't be able to afford to keep a babysitter on call all those months, so we are hoping that Mme L might be able to attend Joe's gigs with him sometimes when I'm at a birth.

Now, before you call the authorities, let me explain: Joe rarely plays in bars or any sort of traditional music establishments. The brand of music that Joe plays is not exactly...let's say...marketable and so the community of musicians here in Toronto that play improvised music have secured a studio of their own in which the majority of their concerts are held. The studio is small - it seats no more than 30 people or so, and there is a closed office set apart from the performance space with a futon where she will settle in when the night wears on.

To be honest, I'm not sure how this will go. She has been to Joe's gigs before, but always with me or a grandparent, so there has always been someone there who can attend to her. The community of people who both play at and attend these gigs is close-knit and open-minded and in general understanding, even when it comes to her antics interrupting the order of things.

I must admit that I've also kind of built this up in my head in this ridiculously romantic way. When I'm totally carried away I imagine her being interviewed 20 years from now by a columnist for an underground art magazine and responding, "Well, my mother was a midwife and, well, babies tend to be born at night, so when I was a kid my dad would drag me off to these shows where he and his friends played this craaaaaazy fucked-up music and I guess pushing boundaries has always just been part of what making art is all about for me."

Pathetic, I know.

And I know that kids are integrated into the night life in many countries and that we promised ourselves that we would model for her that being a parent didn't mean that you had to give up your dreams and that art could be a part of the every day but...

...I worry.

What can I say? I'm a mother.

***************
Joe wished to write his own description of the evening, but he's taken so long and I've just decided to give you my verdict on the experiment (he can fill in his version later, if he likes).

I think that it went well, all things considered. You see, Joe was not only playing at this event, but he was curating it, too. There were three sets, and he played the middle one. Apparently, during the first set, she sat comfortably beside him on the couch. However, while he was playing the second set she spent a lot of time trying to do headstands on the couch, flicking her blanket in audience members' faces (under the pretense of adjusting it) and basically succeeding in distracting Joe from the music. By the third set, Joe had put her to bed in the other room.

Basically, she was a kid. And a pretty good one at that.

Joe was worried that some of the audience members and other musicians were frustrated, but everyone was very patient with her and one musician came up to him after especially to say, "You and her will figure this out, you know."

And they will.

Well and Truly

I thought that I was well and truly done.

This week, an opportunity arose for me to take up a small space at a collaborative blog about women's health and I thought, 'Yes, I'll sign off for good at NotSoSage and direct people to the new site.' I considered telling the other blog's founder about this one, so went back over some of my more recent posts to see whether there was anything I felt I didn't want to share with her (a schoolmate and future colleague).

There followed two comments in the same week by old friends (thank you painted maypole, and Emily, for checking in on me). And some follow-up over Facebook by some others.

And then a conversation with Joe tonight about the isolation I felt during Mme L's infancy and the prospect of there being another Twinkle of light in our future (not yet, but there's some serious discussion going on).

And I found that I couldn't sleep tonight and that I had to get up and write...first an outline for a presentation I will make in September for a peer-to-peer learning opportunity with other students and practicing midwives.

Then to you.

I must admit that, in the past, I have found the commitment that blogging takes overwhelming. Having time to write was one thing, but along with that came the realisation that to be a part of this community I had to read, too. It seems selfish to put stuff out into the ether and expect others to engage with it and yet to never (or rarely) engage them, their thoughts, their lives.

I want you to know that I have been reading, off and on, over the months. Seldom do I comment, but I have visited each of you. I am not yet ready to hazard a guess as to how well I can keep it up.

But I want to. Truly.

Sayonara, 2008

Well, after a brief reappearance, I'm disappearing again until after the New Year.

Thank you for waiting so patiently for my return, but if I have any hope of continuing to blog, I won't be doing it while I'm at my parents' house, for fear of being outed.

Sayonara comes from the root "thus" and "if it be". That seems to be the only way I can look at 2008 as a year. Many, many things - good and bad - came to be, and there was nothing to do but roll with it.

I wish all of you the best for the holiday season. I'll be by to see how 2009 treats you very soon.

Daughtering

This fall I somehow - don't ask me how - found the time to read a novella called Slow Emergencies by Nancy Huston. It wasn't something I would recommend, necessarily, but certainly reasonable enough to pass an otherwise busy time.

There was one line, though, that struck me. In it, the author uses the verb, "daughtering".

As I wondered how I would define "daughtering" (challenging? aging? creating anxiety? teaching new ways to love both her and myself?), I asked myself, 'Well, define mothering, then.'

I can't say that I've found a definition that satisfies. I know that some mythical 'motherlight' did not descend upon me when I became a mother that made me instantly different, unselfish, powerful. I still feel like I'm lost and treading water in this world of parenting.

But there's something to it. Over the summer, an incident occurred that my daughter cannot leave behind her. We were at the park, watching her best friend, Jackson's*, soccer game. She loved to watch him play and is just as eager to play herself, next summer, when she's old enough to join the league. However, she had done something - what it was now slips my mind - that I asked her not to do and received the warning that if she were to do it again we were going home and not watching the rest of the game. When she repeated the deed, I swooped her up and took her across the street to our house.

She cried the whole way. She continued crying for a good 20 minutes. It culminated in her, between sobs, professing that, "It's just that, I really really really really really really really really really really love Jackson". Then I did something she didn't expect.

I burst into tears.

I sobbed. Something I do rarely, and have never done in front of her. It shocked her. It clearly worried her. She still asks me about it: "Mama, remember that time when I was crying and then you started crying? Why were you crying, Mama?" I'm hard-pressed to explain.

It was just that, in that moment, I caught a glimpse of the heartaches - her heartaches - that I would be witness to as she grows up. I hope that she will let me in, let me hold her through them, but let's be honest, there will be a point where even if she were to let me, there would be nothing that I could do for her. And it will tear me apart.

I know that those experiences will mold her and hopefully temper her, but I also know that I would rather that she didn't have to go through them. I would give up just about anything to save her from that heartache.

And so perhaps I came around to some kind of a definition of mothering after all.

The Term is Over...

...I finally have time to write, and damned if I can't think of a thing to say.

I must have written upwards of 30 posts in my head over the past two and a half months but this morning, as I sit alone and with no obligations for the first time in over three months, I can't recall any of it.

I know I need to spend some time visiting and catching up with all of you. And I will do.

I don't think I even know how to relax anymore.

I have been working four days a week and taking three classes for three months and next term I only have one class, so I expect this restlessness I feel will dissipate as I fill my life with leisure activities and pay a little more attention to my health and well-being than I've had the opportunity to do.

I am more convinced than ever that this profession I am training for is the right one for me. The course work has been a perfect mix of basic and social science, clinical and political. The program, and the profession, are not perfect and I am excited about stepping up and pushing for the change that's needed inside the profession, the health care system in general...and in myself.

Our Mme L. is nearly four and is as crazy, stubborn, funny and challenging as any near-4 year-old should be. Sometimes I think she acts more like a teenager than a pre-schooler but she assures me that she plans never to be a teenager, so I guess I must be wrong.

Joe and I are clinging to each other as 2008 seems to be the year of the break-up for so many of our close, committed friends and we're kind of wondering what it is about this year that is bringing so much heartache to so many of the people we love.

I'm looking forward to 2009, for a multitude of reasons. Not least of which is this expectation of balance I have for us...at least for a little while.

It's a little early for New Year's retrospectives, but tell me what you will recall most about 2008. The good, the bad and the ugly.

On the Plus Side...I Have the Vagina of a 20-Something*

[Warning: Adult content. (As if the title wasn't warning enough.)]

So...I had the unenviable experience of visiting the hospital yesterday to have a Bartholin's abscess treated. You know when men hear about castration or some other defilement of the male apparatus and reflexively cross their legs? Women, if you click on that link, get ready to do the same... (Go ahead, do it. But don't say I didn't warn you.)

These abscesses are most common in 20-29 year-old women who haven't had children. I know that this is most definitely TMI for all of you, but I'm writing it because when I searched "'perineal pain' swelling vagina" in desperation, before I went to the hospital, I got nearly 3000 hits, almost none of which mention Bartholin's abscess. Most were about postpartum pain; fair enough. Many sites mentioned much more terrifying possibilities. In the end, one of my midwifery textbooks provided a much more likely (and, frankly, desirable) culprit. Using the same search now that I know the term, I found I had to go through the first 50 hits before I got to one that mentioned Bartholin's as a common cause of pain, even though apparently 1 in 50 women experience them.

I don't know what kind of comic forces in the universe decided I would experience a disorder of the reproductive tract three weeks after I started midwifery school, but it was a humbling experience. And a good one for me to have. As I sat in the hospital room by myself, scared and unsure of what I was about to face, I was reminded of what it was to be a young woman by herself, scared and unsure.

I hope that when I find myself face to face with her - whatever her situation - I can recall that feeling and do everything in my power to care for her.



*Not to mention the increase in hits I'm inevitably going to get based on that title alone...I'd better get my Site Meter back up and running.

A Heard on the CBC...

While listening to the radio in the kitchen on this first slooowww morning in far too long.

"A Rock Obaaamaaaa??? Where is that in this world?"

"Catching" You Up

So, I had this lovely, thought-provoking, dare I say poetic post planned for my first post in over a month (Emily - I just couldn't pull it together for August, my sincerest apologies...but will September 2nd do?) and yet I find that all I really want to do is catch you all up on my life. So. Prepare to be zzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ. See, I'm even putting myself to sleep.

I'll keep it short. Wait, this is me we're talking about. How 'bout, I'll try to make it interesting.

Where were we? Oh, my boss had offered to keep me on in my position while I attended school just so long as I used vacation and overtime to make up for the time I am away at class. I had decided that, given that my family is facing 2.5 years where I will be on call 24/7, I would like to take advantage of vacation time and be prepared to take time off with sick children or to visit sick family members. That meant I had to look for another job.

Well, I must have accidentally swallowed a horseshoe at one point in my life because when I mentioned to a collaborator that I would be leaving my work and would no longer be working on our joint project, they immediately made arrangements to hire me to work specifically on that project, for four days a week, at the same rate that I make in five. I seriously don't have a clue how that happened, but it's done and my last day of work at my "old" job (I love calling it that) is tomorrow.

Not coincidentally, my first day of school is the next day. However, I met most of my classmates at orientation last week. Let me tell you, the women of Ontario are set four years from now. Seriously. For all of my complaints about the application process, it's hard to find fault with any of the women that have been chosen for the program. These women are so accomplished that I'm having a serious case of impostor complex.

It didn't help that an excellent and informative discussion about diversity and difference on the first day of orientation reminded me - once again - what a life of privilege I've led and it's less my own accomplishments that have brought me to this place than a school and social system that continues to favour people who are white and middle-class. I seriously felt like such a cliché. Ooh, another white, middle-class, university-educated, able-bodied, could-afford-to-travel-in-her-20s chick made it into midwifery school? Big whoop-dee-doo.

I'm glad, though, because it's a lesson worth learning over again and I was so impressed with the willingness of the people in the class and the teachers in the program to bring this stuff to the forefront on our first day together.

It bodes well.

As does the fact that today at a dinner organised to introduce students from each year of the program to each other, when I was frustrated and tired and hot and on the rag and feeling angry because I am being treated like a pariah at work simply because I made the galling decision to leave, when Mme L was leading a train of children at high speed around a circuit that included a wheelchair ramp and adult legs, when I raised my voice and asked her to sit still for a moment ("for god's sakes!" I said in my own head and would have said out loud if there weren't so many other parents around), a fellow student said to me, "Jill, there's no one here who needs the ramp and she's not hurting anyone, just let her be her for a little while. If it's bothering anyone they can move. I know that's not typical behaviour for an event like this but give her some room." I thanked her.

We have sold a house, bought a house, become real-deal landlords and I am changing jobs just to make this all happen. In the future, I may even have to live away from my family for part of the time...I get so caught up sometimes in making sure that my little one isn't rocking everyone else's boat while I'm the one straddling the gunnels. The least I can do for her is give her a little space to lose herself once in a while.