Living the dream....say what again?

So devo's today was Heb 5:8, that though Jesus is the Son of God He learned obedience thru suffering...even though He is perfect...He learned obedience thru suffering.
I think I'm slow, why haven't I caught on? I'm this perpetual little kid who thinks that someday we all get our wings...one day I won't be a worm anymore; I'll wake up a butterfly. Ever since I was a kid I've thought that if Cinderella could go from a chimney sweep to a princess someday all of us will shed our worminess and become dancing fairies of the best fairytale variety. I always wondered when things would reach their perfect balance, when prophecy and fulfillment would meet. I kinda thought it would happen in this life, you know, when i grow up.
There is enough scum in this world, my current neighborhood is a picture in contrasts. A tin shed built up against a walled compound with a mansion inside. Down the street children play with no shoes on. The local playground is the garbage dump. And when it rains the sewage infested streets become the local pool. Our landlords have been to Hawaii and California, New York and Calgary even; but they never walk outside their gate...otherwise they would be recognized and then become targets.
So as a kid I knew that when I grew up if I did the right thing I would always know that certain satisfaction of ...well, of doing the right thing...right? Well I'm grown up, and I'm just a grown up worm, I am constantly confused and easily swayed, I still can't see where heaven and earth meet up. I haven't seen the suffering of the poor be eased with $ or awareness programs. Life is still this confusing mesh of people, relationships, dialog, miscommunication. And the dreams of the 'once upon a time' turning into 'happily ever after' seem pretty silly. They seem childish and out of date. Yet here I am...
I am living and breathing the smog with pregnant ladies, I am trying to communicate over skyflakes and coke. And I still look for signs of wings. As we painstakingly sign thru a homevisit and try and 'talk' about husbands and families and prayer requests with our hands, I wonder where eternity comes into all this...or if we reach out to it?!

so maybe I am asking you to bear with a childish dream, a silly old fairytale and my being here really won't change the course of humanity as we know it. Maybe I'm even making things more murky and complicated by being here and how I conduct myself. but I still think that I don't have to imagine our wings...I just have to learn to wait for them. And if all this came to nothing, and really I just wasted my whole existence searching in all the wrong places for a piece of fairytale. Well, by that time, I'd have wings and you'd have wings and we could talk about and admire them for at least a couple thousand years before you remembered to ask if i really ever did make a difference.
not that I don't want to make a difference...but i think that phrase is a little over-rated right now...I'm not an answer to anyone's life economically or spiritually, but i can be with them, i can hope for them, I can witness their worminess and we'll laugh about it. Hopefully alittle here and definately when we have our wings.

GK Chesterton

My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a dorm room with a roomate we can move out on because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or to glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing; its gladness is a reason for loving it, its sadness a reason for loving it more.

postpartums, waiting for births, and baby bathing

Waiting in between the excitment of labors and postpartum visits I entertain myself by trying new sleeping positions. I must say that this position is good for stretching the back. It is a subtle yet effective method of grabbing the couch. Contraindications for this position include having roomates with camera's. And since I'm sure they'll use this pic against me i figured i would beat them to it...
I just want to say, Kim and Alex I am sorry....so sorry. YOU are both very attractive and desirable and beautiful.

Dad

I know a superhero. He's one of those people that hides his true identity, but he really is more than he seems. He even says he doesn't like sciencefiction or comics and discourages us from watching 'mindless entertainment' but I'm beginning to realize it's only cause he doesn't want us to see the correlation between say Spiderman or Superman and himself.
He doesn't have a special outfit, any outfit will do. He's so cool he can make anylook work:)
Although he does have a special name, it's more about the role he plays in fighting for truth and honor in the world.
He can fly. He has special anti-jet lag powers...it's simple, he never sleeps anyway!
Mostly though, he's inspirational, he struggles, he lives to see not just a better world but a new one. An idealist. A dreamer. My Dad...

Dad, I probably won't remember Father's day, and might even be late with your birthday card so i thought I'd just say that your the best. I don't say it enough, so i thought if I blogged it, i can go back and reuse it;) you know, tailor it for all occasions, plus now it's out there-on the web-pretty much i could be your agent. Thanks for e-mailing this week. I was going to work in your super-communicating ability and talk about your faithful sidekick, acer emailer, but it's 4am and i am waiting for a birth. luv you my most...yang ketiga

Oh the responsibilities

I went to visit the twins yesterday. Checking their vitals and listening to breathing. Everything was like check, check, did that, yes, good...and then the umbilicus...it was healthy and dry but I think they're going to have outies! Oh no, I am responsibly for giving these boys ugly buttons! Right then I prayed over them a good future wife who would like them in spite of the button. I prayed that they wouldn't be emotionally traumatized over the outie factor growing up.
I am the one. I hope they can forgive me. Twin boys with outies, I hope that I won't be remembered as that white girl that gave Joseph and Josuah outies!

Laundry

What do you do when labor doesn't progress well and you have to transfer a patient? I do laundry. Something about the rhythm and sound of a washing machine, the wet clean feel of the clothes after ringing them out. And the wonderful smell of scented detergent making all of yesterdays...or this mornings-dirt/smells a memory. this morning I got home from our home birth that we transported and did laundry and kinda wondered why someone with a laundry fetish gets into birth. Birth is not clean or sweet smelling-especially when your in a room that fits one twin bed in it with 3 other white girls, 2 filipina's and 1 very uncomfortable laboring woman. And as your sitting there-trying to breath in a pocket of fresh air from...somewhere...you look at her laundry pile and think-I could do her laundry. There are alot of things I am learning and cannot do when it comes to birth but I can do laundry.
Kinda funny cause my roomies know me well, After the baby died at one of my births I called home for alex to bring a laundry bag to the clinic-so i could do the birth laundry...normally this would be a job left to the family of the laboring woman (in many cases the hubbie)...I didn't want the family to have to do this so I thought we would take it home and do it. Alex being very sensitive and caring thought I wanted her to BRING a bag of laundry from the house to the clinic so I could process and destress over my favorite pastime.
I am glad i have laundry, I am glad I have roomates that know I need laundry. I am glad that birth usually entails doing laundry afterwards...I think I better check on my laundry now.

Seriously

I do not like you, Mr. Mouse
I do not like you in my house
I do not like you on my floor
I do not like you...OUT that door!
I do not like you Mr. Mouse
not in my house,
not on my floor,
not with a friend
no, no i say again!
I do not like you Mr. Mouse
I want to kill you in my house
I want to kill you on my floor
I want to kill you by the door
You don't pay rent
You do not cook
Why should I let you
in too look
It is enough, you have to die!
I'm sorry if i make you cry
it's you or me in this house
death, death to mr mouse


Very sadly I have to report that there have been numerouse sightings with no recent kills...
score KTR 2-Rodents 6

Joseph (who was Jonathan) & Yosuah (who was Joe)

Twins

Okay, so if i hadn't have gotten out of bed yesterday here's what I would have missed...
Church with songs I knew.
Fried Chicken.
And a call to go to a birth at 12:30pm...baby Jonathan came out at 1:45pm and then...wait a second there is definately more in that belly! Oh my word it's twins!
I 'caught' baby Joseph.
Also watched for a separation gush and got the placenta, so incredible, it was massive! The placenta.
Guess who had the twins...Alma. 40 years old and giving birth to twins in the sqatting position!
She is my hero.
I also had the priviledge of going to Raylyn Gonzalez funeral. It was so weird to go to a funeral after being so incredibly happy.
She looked like a little angel, all cute and dressed up. The cemetary was a public cemetary so it lookes like cement building blocks stacked on top of eachother. Most of the graves are children and babies. There was no grass, no space, we walked on graves to get to Raylyn's burial plot and then stood on graves as we watched them cement her into her little resting place. They had a piece of wood to carve her name into the fresh cement and then we left. The man who came to help them cement the grave actually lived there, on the graves, as we left I saw him holding his own baby.
We went straight back to the clinic and I held Jonathan and Joseph, cleaned some mec diapers, talked to alma.
I am so blessed.
And yes, getting up each new day is important. You never know what God has in store for you. You never know what God has up his sleeve and He's just waiting to rise that sun, start the new day and watch your eye's pop all over again.

Tomorrow...

Well, today went well. It didn't start out that well, I was freaking out about no one showing up for prenatals and then lost an important receipt...was ready to cry and then God somehow worked the receipt into somebodies bag-praise Jesus-and i got to prenatals late and there were 4 ladies and the first thing they said was, "Your late!" Oh happy words. Eventually 8 women came and 4 of them were women i have been seeing on an ongoing basis. Alma and Grace among them.
Tomorrow is babe's funeral. Her mum is still in the hospital, I went to see her and she was still in alot of pain from a manual removal of the placenta-basically the Dr. went in a scrapped off the placenta from inside her uterus with his hand-she also had lost alot of blood and had gotten a transfusion. I had no idea what to say and looked around at all her roomates holding their babies and wanted to cry all over again. Why can't it stop for her? I am hoping that mum gets to go to her daughters funeral. So tomorrow will have it's own troubles, i have no idea what I'll say to the family. i have no idea if mum will be there for her daughters burial. So tomorrow, tomorrow is still a mystery. And right now, in times like these i know why God only gives each moment one at a time and doesn't let me see into the future too far. If I knew all that I would have to deal with I would definately not leave my house. So yeah, now how's that for bravery! Well, maybe i would leave to buy more rat glue...speaking of which I think alittle retribution is in order. If i have to deal with a sad day tomorrow, some poor rodent is going to pay tonight! Good-nite and thank-you for your prayers.

namesakes are fun...alex and me with 'mia'

community and a happy memory

I must tell Jesus

I had a baby die yesterday. She was born flat and unresponsive. We did chest compressions and ppv on her for a long time. We prayed and cried and prayed and prayed some more. I don't know what to say about how I feel or what went wrong. But that i am totally wrecked and completely at peace that God is bigger than birth. Do I feel that if only she had gone to a hospital things would have turned out different, of course! But I also know that God doesn't make mistakes, even though i do, and He plans divine appointments and He gives you enough strength for each new day of troubles. And i was drowning in troubles yesterday. Andi's choir sang a song about the earth being tired. There is nothing more exhausting than witnessing the Devil do his best to take our joy, hope and strength by showing us how powerless we are in life and death situations. In turning the miracle of birth into a terrifying display of human weakness, inability and showing us that we are just a breath away from death.
I wanted so much to help women in labor, to encourage and witness the thrill and joy of a new life. This was my worst fear. This was the one thought that i prayed against, i wanted God to spare me from a baby dying at birth, you know, you just figure if your in this for His sake, He can be big enough to keep all the bad things from happening. But God didn't spare Jesus, and He wouldn't let me come out of this training without this experience. being a missionary is not bringing God's magic touch into the life of a desperately poor woman. being a missionary is praying and doing chest compressions, cleaning up the blood, dressing the baby, and listening to a father cry.
I am hanging on to the fact that God can bring life into any situation. He can reveal himself in the dark sometimes better than the light. Although the fig tree doesn't blossom, the labor of the olive tree fail, the flock be cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stahls, yet i will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The lord is my strength and He will make my feet like hinds feet, and He will make me to walk upon my high places. hab 3:17-19

Club KTR

So I've started a new club here in the Philippines. Kill that Rodent! it is possibly the most brave thing I've done yet. i still shreak and scream when I see them-dead or alive-but I have actually taken it upon myself to be the one....in the philippines they like to use the phrase, "you will be the one". So, yes I am the one. I bought rat glue, I've had enough. I will kill rats.
Sightings...3 rodents
Kills...........2 rodents
Score.........2-1 for team KTR
WE are too late to get our rat garbage taken by the trucks, so WE are going to sneak out tonight and throw it into the parked garbage trucks up the street. Brave, short for Maria Joy Enns (and faithful friends). Seriously, I am the one.

testify

Apparently, back in the pioneering and settler days of yore. If a young women of unmarital status went into labor, the attendant-midwife usually-would wait until the peak of labor to ask the girl who the father of the child was. It was a tried and true way of finding out the truth ...Thus implicated, the culprit was then induced to matrimony and fatherhood all at the same time.
This morning a truth came out not during the peak of labor but actually right after the birth of a perfect baby girl. But let me back up a bit...
A mother of 4 and well on her way towards having her 5th, this woman only started coming to prenatals well into her 7th month of pregnancy. At nine months during a prenatal she started joking that there were alot of different parts and maybe she was having twins or alien baby. we all laughed and thought it was a big joke...prenatal care showed nothing abnormal with baby. This morning at 6:20am baby Mia Alex (oh my word I think I have a namesake!!!!) raced out of her mum. The first question her mum asked was is she normal? Alex and Kim and I didn't understand what she was saying but Gerlene (our midwife) told us that there had been an abortive attempt at 7 months. Mum had been worried all this time that something was wrong with baby, because she had tried to kill her. But she couldn't tell us before now. And then she confessed to having had an abortion at 5 months with her pregnancy before this babes-she told Gerlene that her work required her to not get pregnant so she aborted her baby. Then she lost her job anyway, and then her hubbie lost his too. So now she has another mouth to feed and no work for either of them. I don't know if Mia Alex is an appeal for redemption, for what she believes is the 'curse of God' for aborting her other baby, but I do know that babes is perfect. Alex did a postpartum check right there to encourage mum. She's a beautiful babes too.
I hope so much for this little girl. i hope so much for her family. If God can grow a baby in a women who is frightened, and tired and overwhelmed with guilt; then i have to trust that He knows best and that babes is His love child. So hug your mum today. i wish I could hug mine.

all in a days work

Yesterday we went on prenatal homevisits. Trecking thru the slums and eating halo-halo...drinking coke and skyflakes. Then visiting and gettting lectured on how old I am and that I have no baby or asawa (husband). Finally, we get home and it's my turn to cook so I pull out a curry mix. It is always abit daunting to cook for others. So I kinda figured that if I added alittle red chillies it would mask over any weird flavors or burnt taste....i didn't try the mix before i decided to throw in some chilli's though...I made the worlds hottest chilli curry.
My roomies were very forgiving and kept telling me that it was Okay though...no one wanted seconds.
At around 7pm it is time to go to Gerlene's (my midwifes house) and wait in case there is a birth.
Some one comes with their baby and asks Ger to administer antibiotic injections that have been prescribed by the doctor. It is much cheaper for the family to find a kindly midwife to help them out than to pay for a hospital fee and get the dr to administer the medications. The baby has an infection due to meconium asperation during labor. baby sofia was very brave thru it all, at only a week old she gets 2 shots a day! By 8pm i am ready for my evening entertainment. i have become addicted to the evening soaps here on philipino television. i cant understand much, but I think it's the melodrama and continuous emotional confrontation that soothes me. Watching someone else cry and moan about their wretched existence in a different language somehow appeals to me I guess.
Bed at 10pm...I can't watch soaps ALL nite! At 2 am I wake up and then my roomate really wakes up...she thinks there is a spider on her right now! If you knew my roomie-this is not a good thing! So i get up and check her sheets, her hair, her pillow...she jumps off the bed and van't be persuaded to get back on it. It looks like I am going to have to stay awake and watch for creepies with her, but then we get another little visitor, a cockroach crawling straight for my roomies feet. Thinking that this could be what puts her over the edge, I motion for her to get back on the bed...she, thinking it's a spider shows a speed uncharacteristic of someone half asleep, and goes back onto the offending bed. Meanwhile our Gerlene thinks that someone's at the door and we have caught a baby in midair! She laughs it off and goes back to bed and us white girls have to try to figure out how to get back to sleep.
i am tired, it would be nice to sleep, so i offer to sleep on the twin bed with her-against the open window which terrifies her so much. The more the merrier right? She calls it the 'crack'. So I am thinking what a great, brave person I am to sleep on the 'crack'. After about 5 seconds my euphoria wears off and I realize I am sleeping on the 'crack'!
So there we are, two average size white adult females, sleeping on the top bunk of a twin bed in one of the hottest climates in the world. But we aren't really thinking about that right then, we are just two girls trying to get thru a very dark nite with a 'crack', a very uncomfortable crack, a crack with a window. Really it is scarier than it sounds. I did go back to sleep, i did quote scripture, and then morning came. Somehow with a little light things can get alot better. maybe thats why our midwife sleeps with the light on...she knows what hides in the dark...

A proud new godmother!

This is my roomie Kim. She takes all the pictures i publish on the web site. Also she helped deliver Andrea Jesusa. Melba, her mum, is 19 and a great new mum. And just in case you wanted to know andrea was born at home in the squatting position. Pretty dang cool.

family fun dinner

a few of my favorite things...

Saturdays. Prenatal days. I luv it. About 10 ladies come every week. Buntis; that is pregnant in tagalog. my favorite word in tagalog. Anyway, the women are there for monthly and bi-weekly checks. i usually try and see the same ladies each week. Sometimes they bring their kids too which makes it even more fun. Alma is 40. She has 2 kids and this is her 5th pregnancy. She is beautiful and so understanding. i did a homevisit at her house and will be going back for a homebirth when she has her baby. She is due March 20. it's funny cause I know her normal blood pressure, i talk to her about pains and aches and she tells me how excited her 11year old daughter is about a new baby. Also she tells me her hubbie brags that she has the biggest and best belly ever. i feel so lucky to hear about her life and watch her baby move and listen to heart tones.
Grace. Grace is 25. She looks like Beyonce and has a 2 year old daughter named Diana. She is shy and quiet. She always tells me she feels fine, so i try extra hard to watch vital signs and encourage her to eat protein. She is due April 12. And she wants to have her baby at the clinic.
So these are just two of the coolest reasons ever to get up happy on saturday. i am pretty excited about being there to share in their labor and birth. Mostly i just want you to know these ladies too. maybe i can get some pics up for you.

the lady with the needle

I grew up terrified of needles. ask my fam. I was afraid of the boogie-man, crocodiles under my bed and sleeping with my head uncovered, but those were just little compared to the horrible feeling I had seeing ladies in white carrying needles. life plays funny tricks on you though. At prenatals today I needed to give a tetanus shot to a mum. Last week i injected vit K into a tiny baby boy-not even an hour old! I am the needle lady. I have become my own worst nightmare. and whats worse is, I truely mean it when I say, "this will be so good for you!" I haven't pulled the "it hurts me more than it hurts you yet". But still I have reached the point of no return i think. I still hate needles, I think I always will, but that doesn't mean I won't hesitate to give you one:) it'll do ya good.

this is my quiet place. I live right by a cemetary, it is the only place to get away from traffic, constant little companions yelling, "what's your name?", and our landlords dogs that start barking at 4pm on the dot and don't stop until 6pm. I ran across a tombstone that had "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding" on it. It was definately a sign:) In the middle of squatter houses and poverty, I was reminded of Three Hills and just to trust God. So this is my quiet place. Where nothing has to make sense but everything has meaning and purpose. Where big trees still grow.

firsts

I guess there is a first for everything. For everyone. I know I'm being melodramatic but i think this is a big step towards greater ambiguity in my life. And we all know how I deal with ambiguity. Seriously I think that this is about as first as I'm going to get today. baby steps right? i will figure out how to get a picture up someday.