Not On Call!

Last night I was up until 2:30 AM reading...and it was a wonderful wonderful thing.

It's not something I can indulge in too often, because more often than not I am...

On. Call.

What does that mean? That means that one of my doula clients is within two weeks of her due date, and there is a possibility that I could be called to a birth. At anytime. So I need to be ready. All. The. Time.

First of all, I need to make sure my doula bag is packed and ready to go. Ipod and camera battery charged. Extra batteries. Everything cleaned and sanitized from the last birth I attended.

Then, for every day I'm on call I need to make sure that I have:

(a) last-minute childcare available
(b) someone to transport my children to activities
(c) something easy in the freezer that my teens or husband can cook for dinner

Then I think through my plans for the day. I need to make sure that I am not straying too far from home - if a client calls me, I need to be able to get there within a reasonable amount of time.

Any appointments, meetings, plans, etc. need to be made with the caveat that "I might get called to a birth and need to cancel."

If there is a birthday or holiday when I'm on call, there is always the possibility that I will miss it because I am at a birth.

My birth supplies and birthball live in the back of my van. If my husband wants to take my van, he needs to make sure my supplies are taken out.

I don't drink alcohol when I'm on call, because you never know when someone might go into labor.

I can't take sleeping pills of any kind either.

And the hardest part for me -

I need to make sure I get to bed at a decent hour - it is a Bad Bad Thing when you stay up until 2:00 AM, and then get a phone call at 2:30 AM that someone is in labor, and need to leave and possibly not be back for 24 hours.

This summer, I've had a lot of births. I've been on call constantly since early June. We even went away in the middle of June, making sure we didn't go very far and we took two cars, knowing I might have to come back for a birth....and I did.

But NOW....my last August mom had her baby last week. My mid-September mom has already had her baby, and my late September mom is a couple of weeks away from me being on call for her.

So in the meantime, I am staying up late and drinking wine and making plans that I know I probably won't have to change.

In two weeks, I'll be on call again, and that's ok. If I were not on call much longer than that, I would be itching to get back....but in the meantime, I am so much enjoying the Not On Call Life.