My non-mommy self, again

Well, here's the thing-- as long as there's a mommy self, it's really, really hard to have a non-mommy self, because, well, the mommy stuff will always be top priority. It's like the whole work-life vertigo shit has started again even before the work piece is a reality. How's that for screwed up and ass-backwards?

So, to back up a couple steps (see, I finally started in the middle. My dad would be so proud)-- I went to that doula training a few weekends ago. HOLY CRAP. It was amazing-- really everything I wanted and at exactly the right time. I kinda went into a time warp with a fantastic group of women for 3 days, and despite a couple bumps in the road (literal and figurative-- I narrowly dodged mastitis at the end of the week leading up to the workshop), the kiddos survived 3 days without mama. I even ended up leaving SJL for 10 straight hours on Sunday... very unprecedented. The longest I had left her was 5 or 6 hours... it may sound dumb, but this was hard and so, so necessary. And while I came home one day to find her in her diaper, covered with snot and tears, wailing, "I want mama! I want nurse!" we all made it. Halle-freaking-lujah.

But anyway-- this training was truly amazing. Birth is truly amazing, and women supporting other women during birth is so sublime, necessary, and powerful. Remember when women trusted birth, trusted themselves, and trusted their bodies? Good stuff.

But realistically, could I be a birth doula? What would that mean, realistically? It would mean that I would disappear to Planet Birth for 12, 18, 24+ hours... as long as a birth takes, and as we all know, babies come on their own time. How would that work with 2 small kids and a husband who works very full time? Sure, I have some wonderful friends who would help me if I needed childcare, and all of this may/will become easier as my kids get older, but it's a lot to ask for someone to pick up my kids, get them fed, and hang out with them til Dan gets home at 7:15. And then maybe I wouldn't get home til midday the next day... it seems challenging.

I'm curious about models of doula collectives and would love to learn more about these options-- one woman who attended the doula workshop is part of a doula collective, but they are on call for a few days at a time (as opposed to for a specific client) and really, what I would need is to tandem in and out with another doula, possibly during a birth. That doesn't seem all that great, but maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe I just need to table this idea for a while. Sigh.

So, the next idea is to teach childbirth classes, and I think I'd be good at that, if I do say so myself. I've done a lot of education and training in previous jobs, and teaching classes makes much more sense with what my life really looks like. The problem is that it could be hard for me to get a certification, since most agencies that certify also require you to attend 2 births.... and the main reason why I'm choosing this path over the birth doula path is because it will be really, really hard for me to attend births right now. But I'm hoping that I'll figure it out somehow, and maybe I can attend a couple births next spring when the kids will be a little older and maybe a little more OK with me disappearing for an indefinite amount of time.

I have been filling in for my dear friend Laura (who just had a baby--hooray!) who facilitates a new moms' group here in JP. I love it. It feels like home. It's everything I do well and I feel like comes naturally. That gig will end, though, so me being me (i.e. industrious as all get-out), I'm going to start facilitating a group for second time moms since, hey, the issues for second time moms are often different than for first time moms. I mean, many first time moms are focused on their newborn, whereas when you already have a child, when the second one comes, you're often still focused on that child... of course, there are exceptions, but when #2 comes, moms are usually freaking out about #1 because #1 is, well, going through lots of shit associated with the advent of a sibling.

But, of course, there's no money in any of this-- not in any of the community moms' group stuff. It'd be cool if someone could pay me to be a professional friend or something. You think I'm kidding, but I'm kind of not.

So, I guess I'm still figuring it out. I'm slowly finding things that I love and that I feel passionate about, but the challenge is figuring out who to DO this stuff in a sustainable way. And I just read this post again, and it ends up sounding like, "Look at me, do you know how freaking fabulous I am? Pay me to do something for you, dammit!" but those of you who know me know that's not how it is. But I will say that it's been a long, long, LONG time since I felt that sense of, "you know what? This is something that I love and that I feel like I'm good at", and that's a wonderful, wonderful feeling. See, who says all my blog posts are negative?? Perhaps I'm off the hate train for a nano-second.