My vagina has little to do with the space/time continuum

Our program director and midwifery professor said, "Learning to do a humane and accurate pelvic exam basically can change the world." She wrote one of the chapters in Varney's, the midwifery bible. She is everything anyone could want in a midwife or in a teacher, smiling earth mamma, a force for gentleness, champion of the feminine, goddess incarnate.

She gave us all plastic speculums in ziploc baggies, a photocopied chapter on self-examinations, and the link to mybeautifulcervix, where photographs of one woman's cervix at various phases look like abstract fine arts prints. At home, the speculum sat on the coffee table for a few days and I laughed each time I saw it.

I saw so many vaginas at work that seeing someone else's vagina felt about as significant as looking at a belly button or an arm pit. I hadn't looked at mine closely in a while though. I think the last time I did was right after a viewing of the Vagina Monologues. I was squatting on full-length mirror and looking intently when I somehow tilted over too much and created the optical illusion that I was falling down into my own vagina. The vertigo subsided, but I was left with the impression that looking into my vagina was like peering into portal to another dimension, or a riddle about a room of mirrors. It wasn't an activity I could undertake lightly, lest one of my labia prove to be a wrinkle in time that transports me to 200 B.C.

Newly armed with a speculum, a hand mirror, the photocopies, and a LED lamp, I readied myself for a peek at my cervix. On the way I thought I'd try to find my urethra, which I can expertly identify on other woman, but whose location on my own body has alluded me. Sure enough, there it was, right where I've found it on everyone else.

I adjusted the pillows, the bed, the mirror and the light. I tried with the speculum, but it was like I'd been censored with a big black spot over all the important stuff. Adjusted the speculum, the light with my toes, the mirror, the light, the pillows, the light again, another pillow, my whole body, the light, the mirror. Finally I could see my cervix!

It was very unimpressive and ordinary looking, not at all like the fifth dimension I'd been expecting to find. It looks like a puffy glazed donut, like you'd see in the window of any bakery.

Vagina Insecurities

To learn how to do a compassionate and gentle pelvic exam, we are learning on one another. I barely know the names of my classmates and the idea of being examined by some of them makes me feel lonelier than before.

I hate shaving my vagina and no man has moved me to do it for him. Is it the lot of women today to forever be emulating little girls or pornstars? I believe in natural childbirth; I am becoming a midwife because the profession honors and protects women, the approach of a razor toward my poor labia seems like the vilest self-oppression, I WILL NOT SHAVE FOR THIS CLASS!

And yet somehow shaving has become so popular that it's practically indecent not to. Pubic hair removal has gone from unheard of, to unusual, to optional and finally to obligatory, in the grooming habit realm of brushing your teeth or changing your socks. It's almost an affront to the rest of humanity to be a woman with pubic hair.

I'm inclined to ask as to the grooming habits of my fellow classmates. I think they all fancy themselves as feminists of one form or another, but I have the suspicion that they still shave their vaginas. Perhaps a few have some sort of bad-ass women-affirming tattoos somewhere on their pelvises in lieu of pubic hair. Unfortunately, I'm not comfortable asking any of them about this, which bodes really well for Monday when the pants come off.

Relativism

Transitioning to New York and full-time student life has been difficult. After 3 years in the Midwest, I find myself abraded by the ironic, sarcastic attitudes I thought I'd been missing. My fellow students are going straight through the nursing program with no break to practice as RN's. They are cutthroat, and I am wallowing in trying to understand the difference between the student service office and the office of student affairs, where the books are in the library [inaccessible as it turns out, retrieved by the librarian], and the 3 or 4 different computer programs used to store critical pieces of information under obscure tabs.

The culmination of my discombobulation occurred earlier this week, when I went to what I thought was my third lecture but turned out to be my first exam. The students aware of my predicament looked at me pityingly, and then I trumped the entire city's sardonism with a shrug that could only come from a nurse embittered by real-life experience. "Well, at least no babies died."

Medical terminology

An anxious mom asked me between pushes, "What's the correct medical term for vagina?"

I replied, "It's vagina."

She said, "Because we call my little boy's penis a penis, and I just don't know what we'll call it for a girl."

I said, "I think you can call it vagina."

I could tell that patient was still dubious and that the midwife was struggling to suppress laughter. We went back to pushing.

Returning with shell shock

As I prepare to leave this city where I've lived the last three years, I'm becoming aware of the particular sadness of saying goodbye to the comrades who share my wounds. I hugged a resident who worked with me on an unusually sad case, and it occurred to me that nobody else will understand me in the context she does, nor will I have anyone else to share in the shell shock. Here the devastations and triumphs that formed me as a nurse are free to flow into my present; when I move they will be encapsulated into another time.

Changes

Occasionally amidst the stress of moving and the chaos of major life changes happening all at once I think: what if all this upheaval is all my dreams coming true?

Preterm labor voodoo

Ohhh the mystery of preterm labor! What starts it? What stops it? Why can we stop some people but not others? We give Mag and Nifedipine; patients are sent in from clueless out-lying hospitals on combinations of thereof, +/- Turbutaline and progesterone suppositories. It's all quite voodoo, and I'm adding my theory to the mix.

Science is still out on what works best, but I have the suspicion that a calm environment, bedrest, IV hydration, painkillers, and a non-plussed nurse work just as well as any medications we give to stop contractions. My track record for stopping preterm labors is quite good as of late, and though my evidence is purely anecdotal, I'd like to present this case: one day we were quite busy and I admitted a preterm labor patient and did everything but hang the Mag (we were out.) I observed a decrease in pain and a spacing out of contractions well before we actually tocolized her!

Veering even farther away from real science and evidence, I would like to posit that preterm labor is caused by fluctuations in air pressure, emotional stress, full moons, economic recessions, and baby-mamma drama.