On the outside it looks like a beautiful exciting passion driven career. Although we birth workers do this work because we are passionate about it, it’s not all butterflies & roses. It’s being called at all hours when your client is in labor. Sleeping with your phone near your head so you don’t miss a call and checking your phone throughout the night just in case by some miraculous reason you accidentally left it on silent and missed a moms call.
It’s running out into the night or day at literally any moment because a mom is in hard labor. It’s being up sometimes 20, 24 even 30 + hours with a mom because that’s how long she can be in labor and then still caring for her in the postpartum too.
It’s being alert through that time monitoring her vitals and baby’s. Encouraging her through the process because you know she can do it, brainstorming tricks and tips to move things along. It’s attending clinical days when you haven’t slept much that week and giving 110% to each mom that day. Its responding to moms text messages and answering questions or supporting them through difficult times. It’s helping them with breastfeeding and spending hours to try and fix the issues while mom is crying her eyes out. It’s being totally exhausted when you get home but still spending time with your kids because you haven’t seen them in days.
It’s still being mom and cooking, cleaning and checking homework. It’s having a horrible migraine from not sleeping and needing to just rest on the couch even though you know you still have lots of things to do. It’s also charting and monitoring lab results to make sure moms are healthy, hours of accounting and working with billers who fight with insurance companies to pay us for all that we do So when you see a birth worker remember it’s not all butterflies and roses it’s love for what we do and hard work every minute of the day.
