Vacation Time

Any midwife will agree--free time is hard to come by. Most midwives are in private practice and even the ones that work with other midwives don't work shifts. I mean, they don't have 24 hours on and 2 days off or something like that. Instead they interview clients and agree to attend those births. Which means they not only attend the birth from start to finish, but they are on call for that woman 24/7. Thus, if the happy mother-to-be has not yet had her baby, the midwife must remain available, therefore in town, until said woman gives birth. Scheduling free time or vacation time gets tricky, because you can't be on call for any of those mamas and head out of town. Midwives generally solve this problem be either never leaving town or by taking a few weeks off. Now, mind you, by taking a few weeks off, I do not mean that you can skip off to the tropics the entire time; no midwives must account for the women that may go late or early. So you take a week or so off before you leave town and a week or so off after you get back. Confused? Mom's, as many of you can attest to, do not have their babies on their due dates, (well maybe a tenth of them do) generally they have them later. This must be taken into account for vacation time. If you want to go away July 10th-July 20th you can't have a mom due the 5th of July...you could easily miss that birth if she went a bit past her due date, and you couldn't take a mom due the 25th of July, what if she went early? So, if you know, preferably way in advance, that you want to take that week off in July, you must refer all interested clients, whom are due about two weeks before the trip and two weeks after, to another midwife. Complicated right? This is probably why some midwives never seem to take a break...Both of the women I work with are due for a vacation! I have been working with them for over a year and they have not yet skipped town to lounge under the sun in the sand...