I'm out.

Well, I'm not attending the MSL. It's been building and building and I'm glad to be released from it, but really sad that I will miss the experience of learning with women I know and care a lot about. That was one of the biggest things I was looking forward to, but I know there will be other opportunities to be with them.

I am grateful that I was able to sign up for the MSL because it was the excitement about attending which led to my epiphany about being a midwife in the first place. That was a really precious moment in my life and I feel warm every time I think about that 24 hours when it was revealed to me what I will do. It all unfolded in Divine perfection. :) It's okay with me that I am not going now, that is also in perfection.

I'm on to thinking about how I will gain these skills on my own and I have some options which I'm looking into. When you don't have what you need, create it if you can! I am excited about the possibilities and looking forward to the next steps toward midwifery.

So now what? Now I am talking to a midwife friend who has offered to teach me what I would have learned at the MSL and I am talking to her about doing a 'mini' session with a couple of friends who also want to learn. Nothing huge, just a few women getting together to learn together. I can't be derailed because of the shift in course on this MSL training and I won't be, I just have to create something that will meet my needs.

I also plan to contact the local Planned Parenthood and talk to them about volunteering there on Thursdays for the women who are terminating their pregnancies to offer a supportive presence. I know this is done at other clinics but not here (that I'm aware of). I realize that I haven't been exposed to this scenario much (beyond one abortion I attended a few years ago). I know that attending with women I don't know, and what I imagine to be a pretty wide cross-section of society. The majority of my practice is of paying clients- they know their options, generally, they have a good idea of what they want. I am not contacted by women in lower income brackets very often, for example and I don't think I've ever had a client of color, or a woman for whom English was a second language, etc. I've liaised with the public health nurses to offer free services to their clients since I started working as a doula in 2002, but we (the local doulas) don't get called very often. I don't know logistically how I can make this work but I'll talk to the hubs about it and see what ideas we can come up with. I can't see asking a friend (who might be pro-life, it's not like I interview my friends about things like that) to watch my kids so I can go sit with women who are having abortions, that seems weird.

I was thinking about it and I'm not attached to attending homebirths as a midwife. I don't have visions of what it will be like as women birth their babies at home. When I think about being a midwife what I think about is bearing witness to women stepping into their fullness, where ever that is. I love homebirth, but I don't have negative feelings about hospital births. When I think about being a midwife I think about meeting with a family, not just a woman, and standing vigil while they go through their own internal and external shifts into parenthood. Being there if needed and hoping not to be. Home vs. hospital is just not a part of my vision, but what I do see is being With Family, not just With Women.

I thought about why not going into nurse midwifery because I could do both, and I just don't think I'd be able to be present for families in the way I want and feel compelled to be if I was a nurse midwife. Maybe I lack information and I probably do- I never really looked into nurse midwifery because I just have a major aversion to being a nurse, being put in a position where I had to do things I had fundamental opposition to doing. Gah. I don't know. I'd love to hear from nurses/nurse midwives on this.

Time to get back to Daphne Singingtree! It was well worth the money I paid for it (and then some), it was definitely what I was looking for in a midwifery workbook for someone like me who is just getting started. I also downloaded some anatomy apps for my iPhone which I think is pretty funny. I don't know that I'll learn much but hey, every little bit helps. I know that I need to make a serious book list! I wish there were more apps besides Contraction Master for birth folk!