Babies are stealing my summer.

Our weather has finally decided to warm up and be sunny--for the whole two weeks we have left before fall falls upon us. We have been frantically attempting to take advantage of it, as we still have mountains of things to finish and not much time left for finishing. It has not helped our scheduling that my last client decided to labor for 41 hours (no, I am not exaggerating, though I wasn't there the whole time, only the last 37 hours of it) or that exactly one week later I was called in to help out my partner who had two clients break their water the same day. So it the course of eight nights I spent 3 of them not sleeping. And hello, I should really get some sort of prize for heading home after last weekend's birth long enough to shower and change then head back out for an advanced doula training (I was over an hour late, but none of the other doulas held it against me ;) ). I then insisted Troy and the kids meet me that afternoon at our birth center's annual alumni picnic, at which I spent most of the time laying on a blanket on the ground. Again, it's a pretty understanding crowd--my midwife had also been up all night at a birth. She apologized to Troy for my being, "hooked on birth" and suggested he get together with her husband to complain about us.
The unfortunate side of this whole doula biz is that while, in general, birth is wonderful and fantastic and I arrive home exhausted but buzzing from the energy and joy of it, sometimes it doesn't go right and it leaves a deep emotional dent in me. This last birth went that way--due to a medical "oops" (read: neglect and ignorance) the client had to be delivered by c-sect. This is a young, single girl who had wanted beyond anything to have a gentle, interference free out-of-hospital birth and was only in the hospital because her midwife felt she needed a little help getting into labor (I won't get all technical, it's a standard protocal sort of situation). This girl had prepared herself fantastically well despite the fact that she had no one helping her, and all control was taken from her. And there wasn't anything I could do to help her out of that situation, I could merely try to help her through it. So I've been pretty frustrated and sad this week, which is really too bad as it eventually affects the kids-but they are troopers and love being able cheer me up. And Troy is at his best when I am at my worst, so I know I always have a pillar to hold me up. It amazes me how intuitively supportive he is, and how much he has picked up about pregnancy and birth from listening when I don't think he is. I start to lauch into an explanation of a certain procedure or term, and he'll jump in and finish it often surprising the pants off me. And I'm pretty sure by now he'd make a great lactation consultant (I actually overheard him discussing breastfeeding with a friend of his).
I am glad for the exposure to birth the kids are getting-they are growing up knowing that it is a healthy, normal process, difficult but gratifying. They love watching the videos of their own births (G calls them the "being born" movies) and marveling over how they once were such tiny, squirmy creatures. G asks lots of question when I get home from a birth, wanting to know how big the baby is and what I did that helped the mommy. I have to pat myself in the back for assuming that someday he's going to be a great support for whomever he becomes a parent with.