Thoughts of squirrels

I thought of squirrels. Whenever work terrified me, when I watched a patient's fetal heart tracing with consistent late decels, when I shaved and prepped another abdomen for a crash C-section, when I called for a Peds team to possibly resuscitate a neonate after the OB yanked it out with forceps or a vacuum, I'd take a deep breath and think of squirrels. I'd think of squirrels out there in nature having baby squirrels and proliferating with no apparent problems. There are squirrels everywhere! They have multiples every time! You never see them under a tree hemorrhaging or baby squirrels stuck coming out, or caring for retarded baby squirrels who were somehow deprived of oxygen during birth. Admittedly their heads are smaller and they don't live as long as we do and we don't really know squirrel maternal mortality rates, but come on! Birth is natural, everything that lives can do it, and I should calm down and stop looking at the ominous tracing so much. I'm suspicious that if patients were left unmonitored that the outcomes would be the same, I'd like my job more, and my impending stress ulcer would heal up before ever becoming symptomatic.

Now though, I have something even better than squirrels to think of: a real live person, an old friend of mine had the miraculous birth I've known to be out there all along. She birthed in Arkansas, in a tub, with midwives and her husband supporting her. She delivered her baby's head herself and her husband helped with the shoulders. Both are untrained in deliveries, unless you count those of the goats and lambs on their farm. She took no drugs, wore no monitors, never assumed lithotomy position, and was "delivered" by nobody. She and her baby did just fine. She was kind enough to share these beautiful pictures with me, allowed me to repost them here, and provided a much more human image to soothe me during stressful days than lawn pests. I'm really inspired by this birth story and hope to one day be a part of facilitating more births like this!

For the beautiful mother's blog see: http://www.pvillefarmgirl.blogspot.com/
For some of her healthy, homegrown natural meats see: http://www.farmgirlfood.com/