Happy Holidays; Birth in a Barn

    I have always enjoyed working on Christmas;  welcoming a new babe into the world seems the perfect Christmas gift for me.  The years I spent working as a labor and delivery nurse or hospital midwife, I gladly took the Christmas shift.  Growing up Jewish, and marrying a Buddhist, Christmas is not a big family event for us.  Rather, Thanksgiving is the time our family gets together.  But the story of Christmas does touch my heart deeply;   it reminds me to pay attention to this truth :  each baby born is a holy child. 

We are Mammals

   Today I want to write about something truly obvious, but often forgotten.  We, the tech-savy, brilliant, analytical, adapted to extreme-comfort living,  humans,  are actually MAMMALS.  Mammals, yes,  same as our dogs, cats, horses, and yes, apes.   In so much of life, the fact that we are mammals does not play a real significant role.  Attorneys, computer experts, managers of companies or businesses, salespeople, etc do not need to remember they are mammals in order to do their best work.  Midwives, however, do.