I am a working girl at last! Finally, after weeks of overcoming bureaucratic hurdle after hurdle, I am finally working! Today was my first day at my new job as a new midwife at a busy Brooklyn hospital. I can’t even begin to describe to you how exciting it was to get an employee ID with my name and the credential of CNM on it, or my CNM “stamp” that I’ll be using to write prescriptions. All incredibly official. A little bit surreal. I was issued sets of scrubs, two long, white lab coats, spent a portion of the morning talking to the benefits coordinator about my benefits, and then, in the afternoon, was plunked down in the middle of a busy prenatal clinic, in true dyed-in-the-wool sink-or-swim midwifery style.
And how fantastic it as to be back in the midst of pregnant women again! Listening to fetal heart tones, doing Leopold’s maneuvers, estimating fetal weights, listening to women complain about their swollen ankles and over-active bladders and sore backs (normal, normal, all totally normal). The computer system is cumbersome, I’m really, really slow, I have absolutely no idea what paperwork is needed to be filled out for referrals or ultrasounds or triple screens, but I suppose I’ll get there eventually. The slow, painful, very steep learning curve has begun. I can’t wait to look back in 6 months and see all of the incredible progress I’ve made—that is the light at the end of the tunnel. In the meantime, I’ll be exhausted, overwhelmed, and making a lot of mistakes. Oh joy. But yes, oh joy! I’m actually an employed midwife now.
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