Intensive Intensive

The last two weeks of intensive have been quite intensive.  The work load and information hasn’t been difficult to comprehend or remember, I think it is just that after ten days of being hammered with facts and lists and things to do, my mind can’t take any more in.  I reached that point on about Wednesday.  It just felt pointless to come anymore.  But I’ve persisted in coming.

I’m not sure whether or not it has been worth it, to be honest.  This week, from Sunday evening (It’s now Thursday afternoon), if I count up all of the hours that I’ve spent with Nathan, I think I would be struggling to get to three hours.  The last two mornings when I’ve walked out the door, I’ve left him in his Grammy’s arms screaming and crying with little tears running down his face.  I have guilty mother syndrome for sure.  Mum says that as soon as I am out of the house, he calms down and enjoys himself, though he has been a bit more clingy, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.  When I walk into the house, and he catches a glimpse of me, his whole face lights up and the biggest grin breaks across his cheeks.  Then he holds me and he won’t let me go, not even for a second, not even to go to the toilet, until I put him down to go to sleep.

But I am sitting here at the uni library anyway.  Missing my little boy.  I know this is what God wants me to be doing.  I’ve only left him for ten days, but it feels like ten days too many.  Despite that horrible guilt, I love what I’m doing.  I’m tired, and a little bit over this study, but the impact that I can make on one woman’s life still blows me away sometimes.  The power of life is in my hands.

I have no strong desire to become a midwife after this degree if it just means that I slot into a hospital somewhere and never make a difference.  I don’t want to become complacent, or to view this as ‘just a profession.’  I never want to stop fighting for women, fighting for their lives and fighting for their freedom.  Fighting for their respect.