The art of preserving

Some of the plum and apricot crop are preserved as jam

We had a hot day yesterday, and there was a couple of kilos of ripe plums needing to be made into jam.   While I went out to visit a postnatal mother and her baby, Noel worked on the jam.  Now we have newly filled jars to add to our stock for the year, or to give away.

This happens each year.  Sometimes a big crop, sometimes hardly any.  We use simple methods - blanching and freezing, drying, and making jam - and we know that our fruit is preserved free of chemical additives. 



My thoughts now turn to bigger issues.  As I am thinking about retirement from midwifery practice, I look for fruit, and wonder what from my professional journey is worth preserving.

I think the need to preserve knowledge and to pass on skill has always been a professional duty of midwives.  When I have read historical books written by or about midwives, I have enjoyed linking my knowledge to the knowledge of the woman who lived and worked in a different century, attending the women of her community as they gave birth to their babies.  Many women have written journals, and some who are skilled writers have published stories that have endured.  Twenty years ago, when I launched my career in private midwifery practice, the internet (wonderful worldwide web) was new and exciting.  I sensed new possibilities that the www offered.  A book in a shelf is accessible only by those who are physically able to take the book and read it.  The www is a virtual library, and everyone who can access it can benefit from it. An ordinary midwife, like me, could write her stories and present them in a way that anyone could access them.


Recently I had a conversation with a young woman who is expecting her third child.  As her second pregnancy progressed it became apparent from ultrasounds and electronic monitoring that her baby's heart was not functioning well.  This mother experienced weeks of investigations, and visits to specialists, and medication, before her baby was born.  This mother knows the anxiety and stress of a complicated, high risk pregnancy.  We agreed that, in pregnancy and birth, 'uneventful' is good. 

Midwives working in primary maternity care (private and mainstream) in places like Melbourne today usually see healthy mothers and healthy babies - whether the births occur at home or in the hospital.  But a midwife can not forget the possibility of damage or death in any birth, no matter how 'low risk' or uncomplicated it appears.  We know that healthy mothers are most likely to have healthy babies, yet it would be foolish to make some sort of guarantee, that if a mother follows a particular process of preparation, and diet, and physical activity, or state of mind, she will give birth naturally and without incident. 

Every woman is an individual, and her birthing experience is uniquely related to herself, her baby, her family and community situation at the time.   A woman who asks me to be her midwife has usually made very clear choices about her maternity care: that she intends to give birth naturally, avoiding drugs to stimulate labour or to control pain, because she believes that to be the safest way to proceed.  I agree. 

Some women have no concept of carefully informed decision-making; they seem to believe it's their right to choose a birth journey.  The feminist movement has taught them that by controlling their bodies in all areas, including reproduction, they are taking charge of their lives.  It has become common for women to claim that they have been violated in the obstetric interventions used to get their babies born.  Idealistic notions of birth, that a midwife can somehow coach a woman's breathing, or put pressure on some magical point, or manipulate the woman's pelvis, and make it all work well - these ideas may be attractive, but lack substance.  There would be no need for professional attendance if the outcomes could somehow be pre-determined.  There is a journey for each mother and baby, and the interests and wellbeing of both will either open or close doors to options as time passes.  While mainstream obstetric care might proceed quickly to surgery, the authentic midwife will guide a mother in a way that promotes normal birth if that is a reasonable option.


When looking at the epidemiological data of births in Australia, we notice trends: older mothers, more caesarean births, fewer unassisted, spontaneous births.  This is the terrain in which midwives practise for planned home birth, as well as mainstream maternity care.  Women who are giving birth at home aged at least 35 years (30%) are likely to have physical and emotional factors that relate to their age and impact on their ability to give birth in a natural physiological way. Women who have had previous caesarean birth(s) cannot pretend that the uterine scar means nothing.  Women who have been smokers for a number of years; or who are obese; or whose sugar metabolism is compromised, cannot ignore the impact of these conditions on their birthing potential.

If I could preserve one midwifery lesson today, it would be that the woman and her baby are unique, and the midwife's role includes understanding how the related sciences translate into useful knowledge for that individual mother-baby pair.


Thankyou for your comments

Seasons

plums begin to ripen

December brings us to summer.

We have some lovely fruit trees in our back yard, and we look forward to the crops each year.  Apricots are the first of the stone fruit.  They are on an old tree, and there may be enough for a couple of batches of jam, as well as the nicest ones to eat fresh.

Plums are next.  They have begun to develop colour, which will intensify over the next couple of weeks.  Once we have eaten what we need, and shared fruit with the family, there may be some plum sauce this year, as well as excellent jam.  Apricot and plum jam make very acceptable gifts.

The fig tree is heavy with green fruit, which will ripen over the next few months.  The young pear trees are looking good, and I counted 50 green pears on them.  Peaches are the last to ripen, at the end of the summer and into autumn, and we are usually able to lightly stew and freeze a large number of plastic containers of peaches. 

We don't get them all.  Brightly coloured parrots visit and take a noisy meal; possums work through the night; and there are a few insect pests that claim their own sustenance.  The little brown hens do their best to clean up the understory.

Noel and I enjoy working together on the fruit.  Noel's job started months ago, in the early spring, when he got the soft hair brush to dust pollen from one flower to the next.  Living in the suburbs we don't see many honey bees or other natural pollinators.

Now that the first fruit is ready it's important to get it prepared for preserves, and some for dehydration.  We don't use chemical sprays, so molds and pests will quickly damage the ripe fruit.   We have old recipes that our mothers used, from the PWMU Cookbooks.  We have sparkling clean jam jars put away in the cupboard, waiting to be filled.

Recently we bought some stewed peaches and pears, as our frozen supply had come to an end.  What a disappointment!  The commercial ones lack taste, texture, and body.  I won't be rushing to purchase more of them.

That's all very nice, you might say, but what does it have to do with the new theme of this blog, ageing and retirement from paid work?  The fruit trees have been an important part of our lives, marking the seasons, and encouraging us to enjoy the produce of the garden.  We look forward to continuing in this theme as each year comes and goes - tending a few trees, watching the flowers, the little green fruit, the ripe heavy fruit, and enjoying eating and sharing it through the year.

Life is often referred to in terms of seasons: the early spring time; the mature summer; the autumn when the harvest is completed and brought in; and the winter time of rest.  In that sense, the years of retirement are the winter.  In this life there is only one cycle, in which we engage and learn and invest and produce whatever we can.  There is a harvest, but it is in other lives: the lives of our children and grandchildren, and others whose lives we have nurtured or influenced in some way.  They each have their one cycle, and so it goes on.

I do not yet have a vision of the next life, which I look forward to.  Perhaps the winter time of rest will be a time of preparation for eternity: the new heaven, and new earth, and the new body.   







Thankyou for your comments

The passage of time

It seems to me that time has become more of a currency - a commodity of value - as I have got older.  Today I am going to take (approximately) big 10 to 15-year steps back in my memory, to illustrate how I have learnt to value time.  I hope this is more than a self-obsessed reflection (navel-gazing) - I hope it encourages readers to plan to use your own strengths over your expected life journey.

Yesterday I sat next to a friend who is 96 years old.  "How are you, Joyce?" I asked.  "I'm well," she said, "just old."

It is good to belong to a community - to have friends from age groups across the span of time.  It amazes me that a person like Joyce has been 'old' for the time it has taken me to develop and practise as a midwife.  Another friend, a woman in her early 90s named Margaret, was a registered nurse.  In her 80s she was still working in a nursing home, looking after many people who were years younger than her.  These grand ladies set a high standard for 'young ones' like me to follow.  I wonder if I will be able to say, with dry humor, "I'm well - just old" in 15, 20, or 30 years from now!

Most of the time I don't feel old now, even though the government has given me a seniors card.  Most of the time I am able to enjoy work, family, garden, friends - a pretty full life.  But when I miss out on a night's sleep I am reminded that there are lots of younger midwives, all fired up with a strong professional commitment, and keen to practise.  Also, they don't mind staying up all night.


About 20 years ago I took a redundancy package from St George's hospital in Kew, where I had been working as an associate charge midwife.  I joined Midwives in Private Practice (MiPP), and asked a few of the independent midwives (Annie Sprague, Chris Shanahan, and Robyn Thompson) if I could learn from them.  With their support, and the support of women in their care, I attended births in the home for the first time, and decided I was ready to take my own bookings.  I remember noticing little things - that the front door remained closed, and noone who was not invited came anywhere near the labouring woman; that the baby didn't have a plastic name tag on its arm and leg.

I told myself, "I have at least 15 years ahead of me, before I will need to think about retiring.  I am a midwife: I understand midwifery.  I am a mother: I gave birth to and nurtured my four children.  I can guide women, make clinical decisions, and write, teach, and guide other midwives.  I want to practise midwifery in a one-to-one relationship with each woman in my care."  

About 10 years before that, in the early 1980s, I was working night shifts at the Women's Hospital in Carlton.  In a quiet moment I mused to a colleague "One day I would like to work with just a few women, and work with them through the pregnancy, the birth, and postnatally."  (Back then we didn't have words like 'continuity of care', or even the definition of the midwife, and we didn't have the research upon which to base such aspirations.  It was my 'gut feeling'.)

About 10 years before that, in the early 1970s, I went through an amazingly fast journey, of leaving my home in Brisbane, coming to Melbourne to study midwifery, meeting the love of my life (the day after arriving in Melbourne), then (in quick succession): engaged, married, pregnant, graduate, move to USA, and give birth.  No time to consolidate my midwifery learning in a formal sense, but plenty of  maternity-related 'prac' as our babies came into our lives.  (a side note: Noel's graduate studies added to my maternity-related learning, as his research demonstrated the protective effect of colostrum on the newborn calf.  That was new knowledge in the 1970s!)

My mother was a wonderful support to me when our second daughter, Bec, was born.

I would like to conclude this post by telling you, dear reader, that I did not know when I studied midwifery that I would become a good midwife.  In journeying along life's path, I discovered the wonder of love, and of new life.  I have been surprised at how blessed I have been.   God, the Creator and giver of life, has been good to me.

I expect that the 'midwife' in me will continue for as long as mind and body function.  The midwife who is guardian of the mothers and babies; who has skill and knowledge that can be shared in a way that makes sense.  Even when I have ceased receiving calls in the wee hours, to attend the labouring woman, my heart will follow them in their journeys of discovery about the meaning of life.



Thankyou for your comments