Day 30

My hopes and dreams for the future, or something like that. Well, I guess now would be a good time to tell you that after years of toying with the idea, I am taking this year (or, next year or SO, I should say) to get certified with DONA as a professional doula. It's something I've considered doing ever since Eli's birth, but until just recently I've felt that my own kids/fertility issues/pregnancies were enough baby stuff for one woman to handle!

I'm definitely ready for a hiatus from my own personal baby-making adventures for the time being, though, so I feel I could now be free to concentrate on others. And after being present at both my sister and my friend's births recently, it was really confirmed to me that the whole pregnancy/birth/baby thing is a topic for which I can summon endless enthusiasm and interest. I've never felt that way about anything else. I also had a good talk with one of Jess's midwives, who told me that she thought I was a natural doula, and that she felt one day I could even be a midwife or a childbirth educator.

While the idea of actually being the one responsible for delivering the baby still scares me profoundly, I think I could DO it. Birth fascinates me and doesn't disgust me in the least, and I think for the most part I stay pretty calm when I'm at a birth. And I would absolutely, unequivocally love to teach birthing classes someday; it's something I've felt our area is sadly lacking in anyways.

So, that's that. Totally ready to get started on the doula path, and open to more someday, if that seems to be where the path is leading! I still haven't purchased the DONA kit, because once you do you're on the clock to get finished. Since a big part of the training is a (long) weekend workshop, I want to wait until I know Jameson can be without me for two or three days before I go. You're allowed to bring nursing infants with you up to six months old, but even if he were still young enough, he is an active and vocal baby, and I'd feel bad about inflicting him on everyone else trying to listen! So I think I'll be waiting until November, when there's a workshop scheduled at a really cool birth/breastfeeding resource center in Ann Arbor. Once I confirm that in stone (i.e. drop a deposit) I'll go ahead and buy the DONA kit, and get started on my reading list and on trying to find a breastfeeding class around here to attend.

I'm so excited, I won't lie about that. It's certainly not a highly lucrative or glamorous career path, here, that of birth junkie, but it's something for which I feel a lot of passion, and I was starting to think I might never find that niche. That maybe I just didn't HAVE passion for anything useful, or possible. (Like, I totally have passion for drinking red wine and getting in long winded religious/ethical/sociological debates in the wee hours of the morning, but that's not really something anyone gets paid to do, as far as I know.)