waddling the “middle way”

I’ve been thinking this phrase, “waddling the ‘middle way,'” all day long — not very hard, just sort of holding it there, in my mind, gently; pretty sure I remembered it from The Tao of Pooh — and that it’s called the “wu way.”

The “waddling” goes without saying. But my idea of middle…?

* * *

This morning, I called the fetal testing facility and made my first NST appointment (for tomorrow). This afternoon, I met with a Certified Nurse Midwife who has privileges at the hospital where I plan to give birth.

She’s more than used to people switching to her within weeks, days, even hours of their due date, she told me over the phone.

She was my third choice midwife (not that I said that on the phone), based on the recommendations I’d read on the Berkeley Parents Network, and the opinion of my doula (not that she’d cast aspersions on the woman, but rather that she suspected I simply wouldn’t like her.) Unfortunately, numbers one and two were booked and on vacation, respectively.

Oh, how I wish people would be more conscious about the message their messy offices send. Maybe that’s the marketing person in me? Fluorescent lighting that was losing its oomph, dingy walls, old magazines strewn about, dirty carpets crunched up under chairs. She didn’t even have a water cooler. Hello? I was so thirsty too.

Her inner-sanctum office was a little warmer, prettier, with origami decorations and photographs of happy clients covering the walls, and a frosted window letting in filtered natural light.

We sat across from each other in comfortable chairs, next to her desk. I talked to her first about my fear that my OB is being too aggressive in wanting me to do twice-weekly NSTs. The midwife said that actually, she’d have me do the same. She suggested I think of it as confirming the strength of my cord, instead of searching for weakness. I was just happy to have yet another midwife confirm that my OB isn’t overboard in her protocols.

Then we discussed the difference between having an OB deliver vs. a midwife. Main issue seemed to be around what to do if labor is not progressing — i.e.: mama is not dilating after many many hours, or/and baby is in an unusual position.

She said:

“I work very intuitively. At least 15 births a year, I have the situation where the cervix is not opening, and I massage it and it opens. Or the baby is in a (big technical word meaning sunny-side up) position, or angled wrong (again, big technical word here), and I can touch the baby’s head and (makes a swirling motion with fingers to demonstrate) the baby turns around. Sometimes getting the baby into the right position is what helps the cervix to open.”

She told of one client who had been stuck at 2 centimeters after 12 hours of active labor, and with the massage she opened to 4 cm, and with the spinning fingers, the baby repositioned and mama promptly opened to 7, then 10 cm, and gave birth 40 minutes later.

She said that OBs don’t do that sort of thing. If a baby is in a bad position, it’s c-section time.

She said, “The baby is the star. My primary goal is the comfort and safety of the baby.” This was part of a speech about medication and the evils of epidurals. “One client had the epidural and after the birth she couldn’t walk on one leg. That was nerve damage that could be permanent.”

Uh, okay. Happy story. Thanks.

More helpful was her suggestion that small amounts of narcotics are a better way to try first. (Doula had discussed this with Scott and I on Saturday as well.)

The speech also included more mention of her intuitive abilities, and how monitoring is important to keep tabs on the baby’s well being, but also how it has not been shown to improve in any significant way the outcome of births, and that after the fact, comparisons of monitoring tapes to babies’ Apgar scores show no correlation. In other words, she’ll keep an eye on the baby through her third eye and the monitor, but the monitor doesn’t actually mean anything?

(I’ve heard something like this before from many people, including my doula, my friend who is a nurse practitioner, and my friend who is a doctor and a mom, that the monitoring doesn’t correlate, but that people are pretty much required to use it and pay attention to it because it exists, it’s all we have, and it is the only defense in malpractice suits…)

She brought it all home with the now-familiar refrain that midwives take more time with the birth process than doctors. Midwives have lower c-section rates. Doctors are less patient and just want to get the baby out.

I didn’t feel a simpatico with this woman. My heart wasn’t singing. I wasn’t joyful at the thought of escaping my OB and the medical machine, and switching to her.

What I did enjoy today was giving myself permission to explore my options. It would have been nice to explore midwife options several months ago, but I didn’t. Back then, I was still habituated in my thinking that OBs are better. And that midwives are only for homebirths. And further, that hospital midwives are no better than OBs because they are just as rushed and stressed by The System as Doctors. None of these things are necessarily true.

Tonight I called the hospital’s practitioner referral service (open 24 hours — how convenient!) to see if any other midwives might be available. I got one name that I hadn’t already called so I may try her next. Or not.

In the meantime, I will go have my NST tomorrow, and I will ask more questions about birth protocols at my OB appointment on Friday.

And in the end, one way or another, this baby is going to come out.

* * *

After the appointment with the midwife, I found myself very tired. I came home, meditated, fell asleep, awoke to my neighbor and his kids knocking on the door to collect the money I’d pledged to sponsor his daughter’s walk-a-thon for her school (to be my kid’s school one day). His wife will be coming home from the hospital soon. At a party recently she fell in a very unusual manner on a concrete floor and broke both her hips.

I gave them a bag of apples from the most recent (and last-of-the-season) flurry of apple picking in our front and back yards. A combination of granny smiths and golden delicious-es. I loaned him a bunch of DVDs from our collection for his wife to watch while she recuperates.

I decided I am too tired to go to swim class and took a shower and listened to my hypnobirthing recording instead. And then sat down to write this post.

I googled the phrase “wu way” and found this:

THE WU WAY

Wu-wei is the Taoist expression for the power of positive not-thinking.

It is the action in non-action, the knowing in not-knowing, the something in nothing, the doing in not-doing. Wu-wei is the strength of a willow in a wind storm, the resistance in yielding.

It is t’ai chi. Wu-wei is following the way of water, the way of wind. It is not the absence of action, but it is the absence of trying. Wind is never still, but it has no intention. Water ever seeks its own level, but not on purpose.

Wu-wei: The balance point of being and doing.

THE POOH WAY

Literally, Wu Wei means “without doing, causing, or making.” But practically speaking, it means without meddlesome, combative, or egotistical effort. It seems rather significant that the character Wei developed from the symbols for a clawing hand and a monkey, since the term Wu Wei means no going against the nature of things; no clever tampering; no Monkeying Around.

The efficiency of Wu Wei is like that of water flowing over and around the rocks in its path — not the mechanical, straight-line approach that usually ends up short-circuiting natural laws, but one that evolves from an inner sensitivity to the natural rhythm of things.

— From The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff