Tag Archives: Birth

The Strength of Women

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Some weeks I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse to be a midwife. 😀 Providing women with the best, evidenced based care is and always has been my goal. Providing it in such a backward obstetrical world (and that includes the U.S.) can be so trying.

As most of you know, I live in China right now. I’m not really working here as a midwife… just a Consulting Midwife and as the Quality Manager for the hospital I am working for. I have, however, taken on a few lovely expat women who have brought me great joy caring for and I am in awe of the strength of both of these women.

I learned, through both of them this week, how powerful it is for WOMEN to give PERMISSION for the care they receive. To RECEIVE the care that they want and to provide them with the best birth possible, regardless of the situation. And most importantly to watch birth… the exact opposite of the desired outcome, become the ultimate outcome and a charged, amazing, empowering experience did my tired midwife heart a lot of good.

Welcome Earthside Baby M and Baby H… and thank you V and K for giving me the best week I’ve had here in China, you both have amazingly gorgeous girls who I look forward to watching grow up… much love to both of you xoxoxo

Ciao!

This is the easy part of my job 🙂

Dukan – Day 216 – Eating on the Run

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Thursday was a PP day 🙂

Daily Weight Loss: 0.9 lb/0.40 kg
Total Weight Loss: 80.8 lb/36.71 kg

And MY BMI IS NOW NOT IN THE OBESE CATAGORY!!! WOO HOO! 😀 Cart wheels… well, not really, I’d probably hurt myself! My BMI is now 30… DOWN FROM 45. Nevermind the fact that I’ve lost over 80 pounds in 7 months, I’m not OBESE anymore… OK, a couple more cart wheels!

Yesterday was a true midwife day and thus the loss on the scale… I will write about it in a different post… but lets just say that I’m knackered, sad, happy, ecstatic and exhausted all wound in to one midwife!

Breakfast: 2 tea eggs
Late lunch: Grilled chicken chunks
Later dinner: left over grilled chicken chunks

3 coffees, 1.5 liters of water

Exercise: Well a funny thing about that… I went out for my run (in the cold rain… again) and did the whole C25K segment and I hadn’t moved it to the NEXT DAY!!! So it just showed that I had finished what I did 2 days before 😦 I went back inside and thought about it and went back out and ran it again… getting credit for it. And I shaved more than 2 minutes off the run from just before 🙂 That made me very happy. What I really love about C25K is that even though I thought moving forward would be insurmountable, it’s not! It was at first, and I was stuck on Week 4 FOREVER (my own screwed up head), but now I’m running and I’m not out of breath… winded a bit, yes, but not GASPING FOR AIR, like I was before. And, in fact, my legs start getting tired way before my lungs do, how cool is that???

I’m not sure how it will be when the real spring finally arrives here in Hangzhou, China and the pavement isn’t wet… LOL. I’m so used to running in the rain. I would say it has rained 8 out of every 10 times I’ve run. I’m still running past the gym every night… three times and each time I go past, all the people are on the treadmills and I just think out loud… treadmills are for wussies 🙂 Cheeky little bint I am 🙂

Ciao!

Oh… and a before and after shot today… I am wearing the same shirt in both pics… The first couple were taken in 2008 when my precious granddaughter Sofia was born… I bought the shirt at a MANA conference and they didn’t have my size 2XL or even a 1XL… only a large and I wanted support the organization represented on the shirt, so I bought a large, and forced it on… LOL.
The second pic was today. Midwives, do indeed, help people out, and nothing could be truer in regard the birth I was blessed to attend last night/early this morning. I think the shirt is a little big now… but I’ll keep wearing it!!

OMG, I can't believe I'm actually sharing this pic!


The white pants were outrageous!

I think the shirt fits a lot better now!

Dukan – Day 15 – Day 7 Cruise

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Sunday was PP Day
Monday is a PV Day

Daily Loss: 0.4 lb/0.18 kg
Total Loss: 16.3 lb/7.41 kg
Wt. to go: 93.7 lb/42.6 kg

Well, I didn’t get a chance to blog yesterday because I went in to work on my day off (at 8 a.m.) to do a practice drill and we ended up with a real patient in real labor… our first! I left this morning… 27 HOURS LATER, completely shattered, but happy that I didn’t go off my program AND I even got a 30 minute walk in with the pediatrician at 300 a.m.! BTW, it was STILL 97 degrees Fahrenheit at 3 a.m.!

I did manage to get away for an hour or so last night and had dinner at the StoneGrill. OMG was that yummy, yummy food! I asked for the chef to come out and explained my Dukan program to him and he brought me out 3 GORGEOUS sirloin medallions for me to cook on my own Stone Grill hot plate along with a bowl of sliced onions for me to grill, as well. Yeah, that was YUMMY! I was in heaven.

By the time I got home this morning I was starving. What I love is that the girls in the coffee cafe inside my hospital now make my coffee with the Fat Free Coffee Mate and still give it a steamy feel by using the machine to “fluff” it for me. That sustained me enough to drive home!

So now, I’ve had a 2.5 hour nap (wouldn’t sleep tonight if I slept too much) and I’m up and blogging. I’ll be back to my regular blogging tomorrow night, with an end of the day food round up!

Now off to finish eating the smoked salmon with FF fromage frais and onion bits on top… trying to ward of the cat 🙂

LOL… I am so tired I forgot to title my blog 😀