August 8, 2015
It is over a year and a half since this website was created and I last posted. Life has been awesome! I am learning that while life’s curve-balls cannot be controlled, I can choose a coping attitude. Consequently, I am grateful to have work that I love and LGH hospital privilege that enable me to safely provide services in hospital, as well as in women’s homes in my community. Since 2013 when opportunity for other midwives to obtain hospital privilege was restricted, limiting my ability to attract a practice partner, I have appreciated journeying with over 86 women in a solo-midwife capacity. It is the partnership that I have established with women that has kept me enjoying midwifing. I am pleased to note that since I opened MCNS doors 17 years ago, over 847 women and their families have received midwifery services from Vera and her colleagues. While the limitation of midwifery hospital privileges continues to challenge my ability to establish a small group practice whose members all my clients can meet on a regular basis. I value the collegial homebirth and monthly off-call relief agreements that I have established with Andreia Situm from Babease, Aleka Stobo from Coast Midwifery, Grace Brinkman from On-the-drive midwives and others, as well as the team spirit around women and baby centred care that we have developed.
On a more personal level, I continue to embrace my connection to my community, as my smaller midwifery practice has offered me the opportunity to live ‘local’ with my work. I have always enjoyed walking my dog, Koda, born November 2001 and died June 2015. May he rest in peace!
Although I miss him much, I feel fortunate to have neighbors’ dogs that I can walk. I still enjoy cycling with my husband and have greatly appreciated the opportunity to walk or cycle to clients’ homes or Lions Gate Hospital. I persist in bumping into neighborhood mothers who introduce me to their children ranging from toddlers to teenagers as “the midwife who was with mum when I was pregnant and who received you as you were being born…” These encounters always remind me that it is the journey ‘with women and their families’ that I love.
Gardening with my Quayside neighbours and participating in other community events are activities that I also like. Besides relishing the yummy whole food produced, I truly appreciate the chance to better live my values and am glad for my family, friends, neighbors, clients and colleagues who cherish local living. I think that the African proverb ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ is just as relevant in creating sustainable communities and that sustainable, compassionate communities are the way of the future.
