Career developments

There are a couple of major developments on my career path!  

One, I'm starting up my own business as a licensed midwife providing prenatal and postpartum supplemental care to women planning hospital births.  I'll be offering them all the care home birth midwives give their clients during our hour-long visits that obstetricians and hospital midwives simply don't have the time to give, and may also not have the training to give (e.g. holistic approaches).  I will also provide home inductions for select prenatal clients and potentially for select clients of doula friends;  the first and foremost criterion for home induction will be that it would occur within a day or two of a scheduled hospital induction.  (In other words, I'd be trying to help them avoid Pitocin and/or Cytotec.)   Well-woman care and prenatal classes will round out the business.  Stay tuned for my website!  

Two, I'm officially a DVC student for Spring 2013. I will be taking prerequisites for the BSN and MSN programs I am considering, so that I will be ready to move forward either direction when I decide (in 2014 or 2015) whether to go back on call as a licensed midwife providing home birth services or to go back to school to get my MSN to be a nurse-midwife in a hospital.  Nursing prerequisites tend to be impacted classes, so hopefully I am going to be able to get these classes done within a reasonable amount of time while still being able to schedule them while Donovan is in preschool or at night after bedtime.  There are also some online options I can explore, at DVC and otherwise, and I can also take classes at CSU East Bay as part of its "Open University" program.  Most importantly, I have to get excellent grades so that I can get accepted into an accelerated BSN or MSN program.  (And then, if I go the BSN route, I will need to continue to have nothing but top-notch grades so I can get into a distance MSN program.)  My graduate school GPA was fantastic, but my UCLA GPA makes me a bit nervous, especially if you count the pass/no pass classes which factor in as C grades if they are included.  It's above the minimum, but not as high as I'd like to feel confident about getting into a school that's high on my list.  Also, I'm not sure how it's going to look that I started grad school and left before completing my MA.  I am hoping that they will see my tenacity and perseverance from my completion of my midwifery licensure program, and understand that I left my MA program simply because I decided against the career that had been the whole purpose of obtaining the degree.  Given that the accelerated programs specialize in helping people switch careers, I am optimistic that they won't hold that against me.  Regardless, I'm holding myself to a high standard for my grades in these prerequisites.  

Finally, I am still hoping to do some birth work over the next couple of years.  Of course, with a class schedule, I won't have the option of going on call full time.  However, I am hoping that a birth center or private home birth practice will be able to find a use for me to be on call a couple of days a week, or that I can fill in for an assist during school breaks, to enable her to take a vacation.  It might be pie in the sky, considering the full 24/7 call that most area midwives are committed to, but I'm throwing it out there that I am looking for this kind of work. 

If you are a friend or client who has a friend planning a hospital birth but not getting everything she needs from her OB or who is postpartum and would like some extra support, or if you are a home birth midwife with a potential client who just couldn't convince her husband to agree to home birth, I would appreciate your referrals.  If you are a home birth or birth center midwife who would like to share call or has an assist who would like to share call, I would love to talk about working together.  If you would like to simply cheer me on for success in school or in my business, I would also appreciate that!  

Typing

I am teaching Eliana how to properly type.  Today, she wanted to watch me type, to see how I keep my hands centered and move my fingers.  I stopped talking, and while she talked to me, I typed back.  Here's the transcript of my side of the conversation:

"I love Eliana so very very much that I am going to kiss her a zillion times.  Don't run away, not right now.  I have a whole lifetime to keep kissing her and kissing her.  Plus she’s sick and snotty and so am I.  So why would I want to kiss her right now?  Yucky.  Ew.  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.  Get off!  No more kisses!  Please please please.  Ew now she’s touching her stinky feet.  Eeeeew.  Go wash your hands.  Maybe you should put on some socks.  Weren’t you going to read some more?  Or are you having too much fun watching Doctor Who?  No sneezing allowed.  Ew no don't kiss me now.  Phew, but I could smell your snotty breath.  Ew ew ew.  Haven’t I ever told you that giggling and silliness are not allowed in this household?  Well, then why are you giggling?  No coughing allowed either.  Now, go wash your hands, and then what should we do?  Type what?  Every what?  Infinity infinity infinity infinity.  You said type everything.  So, infinity.  Yes?  What is it my darling snotty child?  That would take 33 years.  Type what?  What about?  Ask me a question.  You still can’t understand.  You won’t be able to understand how much I love you until you become a mommy yourself.  And then you won’t believe it, because you’ll think you love your children more than any other mommy in the whole wide world loves her children, even more than I love you.  That’s how much I love you.  So I’d love to tell you all about it, but you still won’t know for many many years."  

She was uncontrollably giggling through about the first half of this. Then, the question she asked was, "What have you wanted me to understand since I was a baby, but I couldn't understand then?"