Caring for humans and creatures, writing about it all
An accurate quote ❤️
Continue reading “A Community Midwifery Service QLD 1997 – 1999”Midwifery is both joyful and painful. We see the best and worst day of people’s lives in our everyday experience. We are incredibly lucky to be part of women’s lives when things are bright and jubilant, but also when they are darkest and most difficult. It allows us to see the light and shade of life in its sharpest exposure
Alexandra Ryan
EMERGENCY 🤕🤒
Sign in at fish- bowl command centre, head off into the mix of unwell humanity.
What’ll the day bring? Slight nerves give an edge working in a place like this, keeps you on yer toes.
People everywhere, organised chaos.
Police, bodies slumped on trolleys, paramedics queue with their unwell human cargo, “not too bad today” says one. A baby wails in the background. A young beetroot faced lass is “finding it hard to breathe.”
Continue reading “Another Day At The Office”
It’s a morning shift, the ward is a long, large L-shape with six bays (four beds in each) seven single rooms and two soundproofed bereavement rooms.
Looking in from the entrance there’s a hive of activity. Cleaners mop, wardies push beds, partners look for loved ones, midwives wheel babies in cots, trolleys jostle for space … blood collectors, meal delivery, laundry and obstetricians with their piles of precariously teetering charts.
Voluminous blue curtains surround each bed giving privacy but it’s noisy with the chorus of call bells, IV pumps, women in early labour, babies crying, private conversations, staff chit-chatting.
Continue reading “A Shift On Maternity ward, Australia 2022”
Owning a few chickens, how hard can it be?
Give em seed, leftover greens, fresh water, shelter, room to do their chicken thing then sit back and enjoy.
The scratching, the dust bathing, the sun baking, the cute clucking.
Therapy pets in your own back yard, delightful.
Continue reading “Chicken Owning FYI”
Barry our first cow dad was delivered from up north. We arrived home, a young bloke was on our nature strip, beside him on a lead, cute teenage Baz calmly nibbling the grass.
Watched with bated breath as he sauntered into the paddock, sniffed his new mate Sally then made a beeline for the expensive bale of lucerne in the corner, no fence jumping or running off this time, we were learning.
But this compliant beginning didn’t last.
Continue reading “The First Calf”A young couple, Nurse/Midwife and Marine Ecologist, leave cold, rainy Scotland for the sunny climes of sub-tropical Queensland, Australia. He likes adventure, change, excitement, she, calm, order, peace and quiet.
Their bond, an overdeveloped care factor for all living things.
One small block of land and many animals later, how does it all work out? What could possibly go wrong?
Continue reading “Emigrating to Oz”