I'm taking an Introduction to Midwifery Class with local Certified Professional Midwife Lynnette Chambers of North Colorado Midwifery. For the first class she wanted us to write a paragraph on our plans for our next 5 years in birth work. I didn't really cover 5 years, and I didn't get it to her in time for the first class (oops!), but here's what I did come up with.
So, it worked out well for me that I didn't get this written in time for our last meeting, because my thoughts on my future in birth have now coalesced slightly from “no clue whatsoever” to “the faintest vision of a clue”. I guess I shouldn't say I had no vision, just that my vision has mostly consisted of more of the same, only ideally with more clients and students. When I initially had my career crisis more than 5 years ago and decided I really wanted to work with women in birth, my first thought was to become a nurse-midwife. I didn't pursue that for a number of reasons at the time, and good thing, because being educated and providing care in a conventional medical setting is not the right thing for me at all. Being a doula offers me two very appealing things in terms of my role at birth. First, the Big Decisions regarding health and safety of mom and baby are not mine to concern myself with. Second, I am able to offer support with a clear conscience knowing that I am never torn between instinct and information, or between the care I give my client and the forces of the law, insurance or politics. (This is all going somewhere, I promise. I told you I was feeling philosophical about this whole thing.) So I am and will be pondering these things as they relate to my future in birth care, particularly as they relate to a possible future in midwifery. I may resolve these in my mind and at some point also be struck with a feeling that I must be a midwife, and if so I will move forward in that direction. If not I may keep doing more of the same, or change it a little, or change it a lot, or put the whole thing aside and have 26 children (okay, that last one is unlikely). I don't really know at this point, but admittedly the lack of some answers and a plan is making my brain itch a little. But I'm resisting my inclination to pursue additional education and credentials just because it seems like the next logical step (yes, yes, I know, the perpetual student). Whatever changes I make I would like them to come about because I feel
After all that about what I don't know, what I do know is that I would like to actively pursue gaining some experience in out-of-hospital birth. If my future is in that arena, I don't think I will ever know it without experiencing that environment directly. If the opportunity arises locally, that will be wonderful. Whether it does or does not, I have recently learned about some other opportunities, the possibilities of which are very exciting to me. The first opportunity is the internship program at the Northern New Mexico Midwifery Center in Taos. I've been obsessing on it a little over the last couple weeks and I think it would be very doable for my husband and I to go to Taos together for a month or so for me to do this. So at the moment I'm anticipating applying to participate in that program in the next year or so. The other opportunity, if the program restarts, is the Mexico Midwifery Program through the National College of Midwifery. It's two month classroom + clinical observation immersion program in Tepoztlan, Mexico. I just about died when I found out where the program is held because Matt and I spent our honeymoon there and I would go back in a second. It feels just meant to be except that the program is on indefinite hiatus due to health problems withing the program director's family. Anyway, either of these opportunities mean I should get crackin' on my Spanish, so that's in the plan as well.
Okay, there it is. You know, I wondered how some of the other people in the class had written a whole page on this, and here I am. I'm just wordy.
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