The Baby Business

I'm a certified nurse midwife. I birth babies. So now I'm birthing a spot to comment on my world and the people who will inherit when I'm gone. My hours are long. My work emotionally intense and physically challenging. I offer my clients an opportunity to have their ideal birth in a hospital environment. I do 15 to 20 births per month and love it. I have done as many as 6 births in 18 hours and alternately gone a week or more with no births at all. I see patients in a private office during the week and am on call all the time. It can be grueling but it is also a blast and I love what I do!
When I'm not birthing, I'm resting. I have a wonderfully supportive, fantastic husband who encouraged me to follow my dream to become a midwife and who is always willing to bring me food when I can't get away from the hospital because of labor sitting. He willingly shares me with my moms and babies and is (almost) always willing to let me run away to work at the birthing barn (hospital).
And so it begins:
I did a birth yesterday/last night that was probably the most awful birth that I have ever done. When all was said and done there was no adrenaline in the room, no excitement, no joy, no love. The BirthMom was laying in the bed with her eyes closed crying, "I hurt, I hurt" she wouldn't open her eyes, or hold her baby, or interact with her husband at all. Both Grandmothers were in the room for the birth and they were there, that is it, just there. The husband verbalized "I never want you to have to go thru this again". Now the clincher: This is a young woman who had an epidural and slept thru the entire labor. She pushed for right at 2 hours and I only turned the epidural off after 1 hour of ineffective pushing. So the only thing she felt during the entire labor was the end bit. I was amazed at how the family infantalized the BirthMom and how they were so into the reward at the end (the baby) that there was no recognition for a job well done, or support for the BirthMom for the work that she did birthing this baby.