It's time for an update on my life. Well, the kids are my life, but I do do other things too! Last time I really updated on things, I was working part time on my master's degree from Indiana University, South Bend. I got about halfway through and then Donny was born. School went on the back burner. I am not sure when I will go back or even if I ever will. It kills me to start something like that and not finish it, but I'm just not so sure if it's worth it right now. I mostly went back so I would have something to do, something to work toward and so that I wouldn't let my hard work in the music world go to waste. IU has one of the best music programs, if not best in the country. They are better rated and crank out more good singers than Julliard. Technically, I go to a satellite campus since I am too far from Bloomington, but my diploma would just say Indiana University since all the campuses are part of the same university. That would be cool to have. Plus, they were paying for a good portion of my tuition with scholarships. But still, I just don't need it right now and I can't justify the time or money. Someday, I would like to finish. Maybe take a class here and there. I was one of only 4 graduate students there, so they pretty much formed the degree around what we wanted or needed. I would prefer to be in a bigger program like down in Bloomington. Too bad Notre Dame doesn't offer it! Ah well...........
I still sing with the South Bend Chamber Singers just to have something musical to do. It makes me really sad sometimes that I was totally poised to have a successful opera career and now it's gone. I am still young and all that, but I really would have needed to keep it up in order to still have a chance at a decent career. My beautiful kids were worth it, right?!?! It would be hard to have a family and be away for weeks at a time rehearsing for an opera. It's for the best.
In the meantime, I think I am going to start teaching again. I have had numerous requests and I think Donny is old enough and predictable enough to take on a few students at home. All of them have offered to have someone watch the kids while I teach. Really, it's hard to pass up a job where you make your own hours and rates, choose your clientele and someone watches your kids. Probably this spring I will take on 5 or so students.
I thought I would share a little about my new interest. Let me give some back story first. After Josie was born, I decided if I had another baby I would want to attempt to have a better labor experience. It wasn't that I was disappointed, I just thought there was probably a better way. I did a lot of reading and research. I checked out every book from the library and talked to lots of birth professionals. That's how I ended up with my plan for Donny.
Anyway, after Donny's birth (which was totally awesome and everything I wanted) I was left with all this information and seemingly useless facts. I started to think it might be cool to do something with it. I have a couple friends that are doula's and people had recommended that to me. I would love to do that, but it's just not practical with 2 young kids at home. I couldn't be on call, at least not often. After looking into a few options, I decided to become an LCCE or
Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator. There are a few organizations that certify childbirth educators, ICEA, Lamaze, and Bradley being the most well known. The
Lamaze philosophy and training seemed to be the best fit for me. They have mostly abandoned the famous breathing methods in favor of a more evidence-based, personalized approach.
So far, I am mostly finished. It usually takes at least a year to get certified and it will be about that for me. I still need to take a couple courses in Chicago and do supervised teaching. Then, I can take the test and become certified! The training in Chicago is actually supposed to be for DONA certified doula's but it counts for Lamaze too. I am thinking of even dual certifying in both. Even if I don't do it much, having doula training would be nice and helpful as an educator. I will be doing supervised teaching at the hospital, so that will be fun. I am hoping to find my own clientele or work with some of the local midwives. I probably will have to work for a hospital though, since that's really the place most people sign up for classes. Teaching for an institution has definite downsides. You have to be really careful about what and how you teach. Since many hospitals and OB groups have different protocols and ideas about care, interventions and their uses vary widely. So, even if it's not evidence based or even safe, you have to be careful about addressing questionable protocols or the hospital obviously wont want to employ you. It's a bummer for the students cause they may not be getting full disclosure and the info may be biased. Practices are always changing in maternity care. They are hopefully usually evidence based but sometimes it takes physicians a loooooooong time to catch on. Some probably just don't want to change what they have been doing for years, even if studies show it's not the best. Remember spanking babies at birth? Shaving the mother? Banning the father from the delivery room? Once a c section, always a c section? All things that used to be common place but found to be unhelpful or even harmful. A good example is eating and drinking during labor. Studies have found no adverse effects of having this freedom yet most hospitals still have restrictions on this. But it varies widely. Some allow only fluids, some light snacks, some nothing. Some have given power back to the mother with this and no longer restrict. There isn't a difference in safety, just a difference in protocol for each hospital. So, you can't just tell your students to eat and drink and all that if the hospital you work for doesn't "allow" it. Of course, the mother can do whatever they want and eat anyway since she still has her autonomy, but still, there is an ethics problem. There is a lot of training on ethics and how to be honest and fair while working for an institution.
So, long story short, I am hoping to finish up this year and start teaching birth classes next year. At the very least, I've learned a ton about pregnancy, birth and maternity care so that has been really interesting. I'm also writing guest posts for the birth center blog on different birth topics. I'll put a link on the sidebar when the website is back up. It's under construction right now.
I guess the only other thing I've been up to is the preschool we participate in. We do a sort of joy school with 3 other moms from church. We rotate houses and get together on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a couple hours. This year we focused on the alphabet, doing one letter each week. We also taught numbers, colors, and shapes. We did tons of crafts, activities, projects, and even a field trip. We are planning on continuing this year since Josie loves it so much. It's nice cause the kids are all friends and it's really tailored for each of them. It will be nice to make it a little more advanced this year. I'd love any ideas you might have on fun things to do or learn!
I guess that's it for now! I love learning new things and I feel like I am always evolving and learning something new about myself all the time. I hope I can get my kids to love learning too!
