Yacht Racing

kids racing toy yachts only 20c each as long as they like
Originally uploaded by PamDH

We had a lovely visit to Picton today. There is so much to do on the foreshore for the kids during the holidays. In the picture they can sail toy yachts for 20c, there is no time limit and they just love it.

Images of New Zealand

I had forgotten my subscription to this application and so I have been putting together some of my pictures I have had stored on Flickr.

I hope you enjoy the presentations!

Animoto.com

Christmas 09_0001_NEW.wmv

Here we have the first of Christmas 09 video's made with pictures I have taken.

They're on!

they're on!
Originally uploaded by midwifepam

Over the weekend, we went to New Plymouth and watched Fleetwood Mac in concert.

I must admit to being just a little worried when I arranged everything a few months ago even down to being anxious about travelling around the country and leaving the girls at home.

Our hero childcare person came in the form of Claudia, she has nannied for us in the past from when the girls were in pre school and I was working until she went to university. Whenever she comes home for the holidays she always contacts us to ask about visiting the girls and so she was the first person I cantacted to ask to babysit whilst we were away.
I get the usual 'wobbles' and always get concerned about what will happen if we are involved in an accident whilst we are away. What will happen to the girls? Anyhow for once, I had to bury such thoughts and carry on.
I discovered on the day of booking the concert tickets that it is a logistical nightmare then arranging, accomodation and transport. The flights were going to cost $1,300 for both of us and that is if they had been available! I landed lucky with accomodation and found a motel which was within 15mins walking distance from the venue with just one studio available hurriedly I booked it.
We travelled on the 6.25am ferry to Wellington and then drove for 5hrs to New Plymouth. We were shattered when we arrived but thankfully we had a couple of hours before we had to go to the event so we had an afternoon nap.
I was chomping at the bit to get to the venue and Chris calmly explained that even though the gates opened at 6pm we didn't need to be there at that time, (did I mention I had never been to a concert before?). I managed to hold myself back for at least an extra 15mins and we arrived in our seats at 6.30pm. From that point onwards we never left our seats, we didn't drink anything because that meant we may have to visit the toilet mid performance! I wish those around us could have followed the same rule. They were up, down walking down the row of people making everyone stand up for them far too frequently just to come back with another 4 cans of beer or for the 5th glass of wine. I felt like asking, "Did you actually come to watch and listen to Fleetwood Mac or did you come to drink wine and beer?"

Anyhow the warm up band from Lyttleton did a great job, but I fail to recall their name which will be frustrating for the band themselves. I am just grateful they won't read this blog!

Then the inevitable happened Fleetwood Mac arrived on stage. I sat mesmerised through the whole performance. Stevie Nicks was amazing, and regardless of the lack of class of the reporter for the local paper who claimed her voice was not quite the same as it used to be demonstrated, she is like a very fine wine which matures and becomes more rounded at time goes by. Lindsay Buckingham was a god with the guitar. His rendition of "Big Love" with only his guitar, no other instruments on stage and to feel the emotion he poured into the song was breathtaking.

I was desperate a number of times to jump out of my seat, but we were surrounded by an obvious middle class 40 somethings who could afford the tickets and who demonstrated a reserved appreciation for the music that is until three songs from the end. It was at this point everyone seemed to be on their feet clapping, singing and dancing their hearts out!

I left the venue hoarse and with a sore throat. It was fantastic to hear a band which were better live than anything I have ever heard on CD.

We had a ball!

Trauma of differing recollections of birth experience

I made the mistake today of calling into the local maternity unit, to find one of my past women was there under the care of another midwife.

My recollection of the previous birth with me as the LMC was a wonderful empowering normal birth to a large baby in an upright squatting position. I had felt suitably proud of myself, having kept the birthing process normal, without an epidural and a normal birth for a 1st time mum who had a nearly 9lb baby. The notes I made reflected that.

I had followed mine and the College of Midwives philosophy of keeping birth normal.

Unfortunately her recollection is rather different she now describes to her new LMC how traumatising she found the first birth and how I left her alone for hours and hours on end. It is documented in the notes how she came in was assessed as not in labour and admitted to the ward at 3am. I was then called back at 7.15 am. So there was only a period of 4hrs where I left her in the care of ward midwives.

I am upset today and I feel my reputation sullied!

Reflecting and lamenting

I have had a frustrating couple of days.

I have a desktop computer which is six years old. It runs on windows XP.
I also have various software options on it.

A little while ago I started to put together the video's I had made for antenatal education, I used windows movie maker and I created this movie which was great. The only problem was when the participants took them home they would only play on their PC's not in their DVD players.
I therefore purchased another piece of software which converted the file to a DVD file which played fabulously in the DVD player but however somehow the file wasn't saved.

I have since tried to use windows movie maker again but the program won't work, I have no idea why.

For the last two days I have been trying to put the movie files onto a DVD using Power Producer but for some reason the writing process becomes interrupted and it stops.

I also tried using Nero burning to DVD, but because my desktop is 6yrs old the memory has become used up, the local disc only has 74.8GB of space and I had actually got down to not having enough space available to save projects.

Today I have bought an external hard drive that has 1TB of space and I have transferred all pictures and video files along with other files to try and free up some space.

I also bought MoviePlus 5 to create movie's out of my video's but I have hit another snag, when i try and export the movie to disc it says I don't have a DVD writer!

I am tired now, I have been at this for the last two days with little to show for my efforts. i have midwives and women waiting for the DVD's and I need to get this done!

Jasmine and Jemima Christmas Tree '09

Click to Play

How the children decorate the tree

Sun shines brightly on the Christmas parade 2009

13122009(014).jpg
Originally uploaded by midwifepam

This afternoon we visited the Christmas parade in Blenheim.

The biggest and the best Christmas parade yet that we have seen since arriving in Blenheim nearly 6yrs ago.

The day threatened rain early on with dark clouds hovering angrily over the town. However they soon parted to allow the sunshine to shine brightly down on the floats as they went by.

The girls soon found their hands over flowing with lollies and chocolates which were handed out by the participants.

The biggest ooooo's and ahhhhh's were reserved for the SPCA who came past showing off the dogs which are currently up for adoption. My favourites are the bearded cross collies which are there awaiting a new home. I know I daren't visit the sanctuary because if I did I would be coming away with a new dog and Chris would not be pleased!

Joke for ya'll.

Never Choke in a Restaurant in the South! Two hillbillies walk into a restaurant. While having a bite to eat, they talk about their moonshine operation.

Suddenly, a woman at a nearby table, who is eating sandwich, begins to cough.

After a minute or so, it becomes apparent that she is in real distress.

One of the hillbillies looks at her and says, 'Kin ya swallar?'

The woman shakes her head no.
Then he asks, 'Kin ya breathe?'

The woman begins to turn blue and shakes her head no.
The hillbilly walks over to the woman, lifts up her dress, yanks down her drawers and quickly gives her right butt cheek a lick with his tongue.

The woman is so shocked that she has a violent spasm and the obstruction flies out of her mouth.

As she begins to breathe again, the Hillbilly walks slowly back to his table.

His partner says, 'Ya know, I'd heerd of that there 'Hind Lick Maneuver' but I ain't niver seed nobody do it!'

Gaining Solace in the art of growing potatoes

There is something to be said for growing potatoes. I am immensely pleased with my production of potatoes I think it appeals to my inner Irish roots!

It has been a disappointing week for me as I wasn't shortlisted for interview for a midwifery lecturer post which was advertised in Wellington.

I have sent out a few emails to try and gain some professional advice on how possible it is for me to achieve this career ambition but I have yet to receive some concrete career advice.

At this moment in time I intend to push on through and concentrate on developing the teenage, young and Maori mums antenatal education service using all means possible, online, twitter, facebook and drop in sessions.

For a time at the moment I am reluctant to apply for any further posts at the moment, I feel that somehow the time isn't right.

Unfortunately it has also affected my confidence for putting myself forward for submitting abstracts for conference. I shall start to work on one and see where it leads me.

Actually if anyone would like to share some career advice it would be greatly appreciated.

Here is a kiwi christmas Jingle

Here is a tune which was found by the local More FM team of Jamie and Nige last year.

Kiwi Xmas.mp3

No one told me this would happen!

Facial Hair!

I think it was my EX husband who was kind enough to tell me about some hair I had growing on my face at the height of all our troubles when hurting and wounding each other had become our central theme in life.

I was horrified and never in a million years ever thought women could develop facial hair. Ever since then I have experimented with different methods of removal.

I once tried to use the same strips of wax that can be used on the legs but that resulted in a huge red rash which spread all over my top lip and around my chin.

I have tried plucking but they seem to be getting more and more and taking longer and longer to remove.

I then tried the specific facial strips with varying degrees of success sometimes some hairs get left behind and no matter how hard you try you can't get them out without resorting to tweezers.

Last night I tried the facial wand. You spread wax over the offending parts and use the special cloth strips to remove the hair from the exact spot which you have placed the wax. I found this a particularly painless exercise however it resulted in my husband coming searching for me into the bathroom. When he inqured what I was doing I had to explain I was waxing my top lip removing unwanted hair. The look on his face was one which suggested I had shattered some type of illusion for him! He hurriedly left the bathroom I am sure feeling like I had just shared a little too much information!

Tech Skills workshops Day 2

Day 2 of the Tech skills workshop was far more enjoyable that the previous day's workshop. Somehow there was a greater feeling of 'bonding' within the group which made a more relaxing atmosphere.

The theme for the day was about keeping birth 'normal' and to remind us all of the physiology of birthing.

The day began with a video of, I think it was, 4 women being videoed during their labours. It was a german video. I was ok until the second shot of a couple 'chanting' through her contractions. I looked at a colleague who sort of giggled, I then had to look at the floor as I was suddenly overcome with those childish attacks of uncontrollable giggling laughter that makes you cry.
Overall it was a good video and plenty of us have seen women go through labour following their own instincts through labour not requiring pain relief. These women in the video were well motivated, well informed women birthing in a birthing unit.
It caused plenty of debate amongst the group after the video's had finished.

Assessment skills in labour

We then divided into groups and reviewed 4 articles which were concerned with Vaginal Examinations in labour, partograms, purple line and abdominal palpation. Each group reviewed their article and fed back to the group to see if it would change any of our practices. My group had an article on Partograms many things came to light, the usefulness of it, when was it useful? For my own practice if a labour is abnormal, induced or requires the involvement of an obstetrician then I will use the partogram. If someone comes in with spontanteous labour, has a normal birth with no problems then I don't waste any time duplicating information by creating a partogram after the fact. In actual fact I love to tear it up and put it in the bin!
Actually the partogram was created by the WHO thinking of women in 3rd world countries who are dying in childbirth because they have been in labour for weeks.

Marketing Fetal heart Monitoring

I loved the task our group had when we were given an item of monitoring which we had to market to the rest of the group. Our group had a soncaid doppler to sell. We created an infomercial style of advert. It was a whole heap of fun and I wish we could have video'd it.

Monitoring the normal progress of labour

This was a scenario based theme which we all worked in a group to solve.

Overall it was good to revise emergency situations and question the reasons for routine practices. I was given cause to think about how not only how the baby moves and rotates through the pelvis but to also consider how the pelvis can move when the women changes position through her labour.

I did learn things and I have been reflecting.

I also ordered another book once I got home from the day,

'Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering" By Sarah J. Buckley, MD