My calling

I have been back and forth with this for a year or so now. I have a degree in Early Childhood Education. I loved what I did. I loved working with children and teaching them and helping them to learn and grow. That was my place. Since having my own children, I must admit that I still love the child development, but I found something I love even more.

I want to work with pregnant women, birthing woman, newborns and breastfeeding. I want to roll that all into one career. I thought about getting into nursing, but I can't get into the two classes I need to take before applying for the highly competitive program. I thought about being a birth doula because that is where my passion lies. However, as a mother of three I can't make myself readily available to laboring women 24/7. Then I found a program for a postpartum doula and I was sold. This is what I want to do. I seriously have my whole life planned now. I want to start off as a postpartum doula, move into birth doula and eventually get certified as a lactation consultant. It would be cool to start my own business, but I can handle being affiliated with a hospital. I want to help women have a positive breastfeeding experience like I was blessed to have with our three girls.

I have completed my five chapters of breastfeeding knowledge and done the five tests. I whizzed right thru without any problems. Now, I move onto the reading portion of the program and I need to purchase $60 worth of books. Won't Jay be thrilled. :) I will need to attend a 4 day workshop in April in Ann Arbor, but I can handle it. I have to step outside my comfort zone and do this because I honestly feel like I was put on this earth to do this. I have the drive. Now all I need is the motivation (and a whole lotta cash.) I did look into getting a scholarship in which they will pay the amount of my seminar, I just have to sign a contract that I will provide free doula care to low income/ high risk families to work off my scholarship. I think that would be very interesting and extremely rewarding work. Afterall, I think high rish women will be the ones to benefit most from my services.

I seriously cannot wait to get the show on the road. I know I can do this and what better time than now? It's totally doable and as I read somewhere, what better thing is there than to get paid for doing something you LOVE and something that you would most likely do for free?

Wish me luck. I will need all the support I can get. I would love to have this completed by the end of the summer next year. Maybe if I try really hard I can make that happen. I already have a few of the 18 steps completed, so it can't take that long. :) Wheeeee......