Damn it! It's still there.

Awesome.  All it takes is a hurt back and ruined plans for housecleaning to completely derail my life.  Seriously, I stopped off at Wally World after dropping off the kids this morning and stocked up for spring cleaning.  I came home with a brand new mop, a big pack of new scrubber sponges, and several bottles of my favorite cleaning products.  I was all set to have a good, productive day, and then I hurt my back bringing in the groceries, and am stuck on the heating pad hoping I can work Sunday night.

And of course, we all know what that leads to.....DAYTIME TV!  While flipping channels amongst the latest Maury paternity special and Dr. Phil's parade of parental misfits, I landed on A Baby Story.  I used to watch this show regularly, but finally had to shut it off while preparing myself to attempt a VBAC.  It seemed like every damned one was ending in a cesarean after really obvious doctor meddling, and it was, as Garth Algar so eloquently stated, "sucking my will to live!"  So I have probably not watched that show in a decade.

So what episode do I land on today?  Of course it was the beautiful, peaceful, midwife-attended water birth.  I watched for a few minutes, loving what I was seeing, especially when the mom said she didn't feel ready to push yet, and her midwife said, "OK, that's fine.  You'll know when you're ready."  And she did.  And she pushed that baby out quickly, with no trauma, and with no one screaming or counting at her, or shoving her knees in her ears.  And I promptly burst into tears.

Damn it.  It's still there.

My description says I am a newly-certified CNA and says that I will talk about my journey into the healthcare system.  But I am starting to think that it might turn into the story of my journey right back out of it.

Many people in my life were shocked by my decision to get certified and work as a nursing assistant.  Due to my birth experiences and history, I developed a serious dislike of doctors and nurses.  When it comes to acute trauma, injury, or disease, medical care in this country is second-to-none.  Lives are saved every day that would be lost anywhere else.  But when it comes to a natural process like uncomplicated birth, their involvement more often causes problems rather than solving anything.  For women who truly do have complications in pregnancy or cannot give birth other than by cesarean, obstetricians are a blessing.  But there is absolutely no way that more than 25% of women in this country are incapable of giving birth without surgical intervention.  If that were true, the species would have died out long ago.  Many of the things that are done to women in childbirth in this country would be sexual assault, or straight battery, if done in any other venue, and a lot of times, that's about how much consent is involved.  Birth does not have to be that way.

Honestly, my choice to enter the field of healthcare was purely economic.  My husband wanted to get out of the military, and for him to do so, I had to help support the family.  I figured that this was a field in which there would always be jobs, and it didn't cost much in money or time to take the class and get certified.  So here I am, and I hate it.  Oh my God, do I hate it.  I will stay with it for now, because my husband is in school and working full time, and I am carrying our health insurance.  But I spend every day before a night that I work dreading it.  And my expectations are usually fulfilled.  I thought I might progress to becoming a nurse, but now that I have seen the inner workings of it all.... you couldn't pay me enough.  I don't have the desire or drive to get through nursing school, and I don't want the job that waits at the end of it.

So where am I going with all this?  Midwifery.

I have many times considered pursuing a career as a midwife.  Natural, peaceful, healthy birth, that feeds women's spirits and empowers them as mothers by demonstrating their capability, has been a passion of mine since soon after it was stolen from me.  I eventually reclaimed it, but only with the help of a pair of midwives in Montana, and the support of a husband who couldn't stand to watch me suffer any more.

I have all the same fears and concerns I have always had every time I considered this in the past.  I am not sure I have what it takes to face the risks of starting a business, and I wonder if I have the right to put my family's economic well-being at risk just to pursue my own dream.  I wonder how I would be available for births at all hours and still take care of my family.  I wonder if I have the right personality, disposition, or enough strength to be so pivotal to women in need at their most vulnerable time.  Do I dare take on that much responsibility?

But the fact remains that the only two things that have ever inspired passion in me, from which I could make a career, are birth and politics.  I can't and won't do politics while I am still raising children, and judging from what happens to even the best people in the political arena, I am not sure I ever will.  And birth just keeps smashing into my stream of consciousness, like today.  I am starting to think God might be trying to lead me somewhere, and that He is getting tired of waiting for me to catch on, and has now resorted to bat-upside-the-head tactics.  Of course, He had to set a bush on fire to get through to Moses, so.....

I keep thinking that now that my own childbearing days are over, this passion will become less immediate and I can move on to other things.  And then I see a water birth on TV and act like a faucet.  I have run from this for a long time, because I know that working as a doula and then a midwife is going to engage everything in my being, take me up, and wring me out emotionally every single time.  There is no way I will be able to maintain any kind of detachment or distance.  It will take everything I am out of me, and then replace it.  Over and over again.

But isn't that what all the most successful people say about their life's work?