Who I am and Why I do what I do

So, for the sake of keeping the 'about me' section from taking over I've decided to start my blog with the story of why I'm teaching childbirth classes.

I haven't always been a natural, granola, birth fanatic type of girl. :) In fact, before I got pregnant, I hadn't thought much about it. Of course, once you find out you are pregnant, you start thinking about a lot of things you've never thought about before.
I knew that my mother had fast labors. I'm the oldest of four and the only one she had an epidural with, due mainly to the fact that she had me so quickly the epidural never had time to kick in. So she endured all the labor, and then went numb after.. pretty much exactly the opposite of what you want. :) After that she just planned natural births. She ran the gambit of birth, she had babies in the hospital, a birth center and at home. So, looking back, I do have a background of natural birth but I hadn't really thought of it at all until that stick turned pink.

Once that happened I decided I had better figure out how to do this naturally. If i was going to deliver as quickly as my mom and not have time for the drugs, I'd need some way to handle it. I interviewed a couple OB's and a couple midwives and quickly settled on a midwife. The OB's seemed confused when I even asked to come meet them before deciding on them, and I got maybe 5 minutes of their time. My midwife spent an hour with my husband and me. Giving us a tour of the facilities, answering any questions we had, and even suggesting questions we hadn't thought of. Once I'd signed up with her she suggested I take a childbirth class and gave me a list of several different teachers and methods. I will forever be grateful for the one that I randomly selected that day.

My husband Tom was supportive of my decision to birth naturally, mostly due to learning that the epidural is generally the most expensive part of labor. Always the economist, my husband. :) He wasn't super excited about the 12 week birth class I'd decided on. He couldn't imagine what he'd need to learn that would take 12 weeks. However, the smart man that he was, he didn't fight his pregnant wife and grudgingly agreed to go with me.

I'm not sure what either of us expected to find at our birth class, but we were both immediately sucked into this new world. Being first time parents all of this was new and exciting anyway, but finding out all this new information was entrancing. I was surprised at how much Tom was enjoying himself and participating. And how much he seemed to be understanding and appreciating what I was going through. I loved my class. The 12 weeks flew by. I looked forward every week to the one night that we would get to slow down our busy world and focus on this big change happening in our lives. It was our little baby date night. :)

Then the baby came. I had a beautiful birth. She did come quickly. She was born less than an hour after I walked through the door of the birth center. I was very grateful for the class I took, and the help Tom was able to be for me. After that life moved on. Having a new baby changes life so much.

It was not until my 2nd pregnancy I think the birth bug really bit me. A good friend who was pregnant with her first child and due a couple months before me had, by coincidence, signed up for the same childbirth class I'd taken, from the same teacher. I had such fond memories of the class, and thought it would be fun to spend the time with my friend, so we signed up again.

This time around I came from a different place. And I soaked up all the information that our instructor gave us and asked for more. I watched documentaries, I read books, I searched the internet for articles and I posted unpopular opinions on social networking sites. :) I became totally annoying to everyone around me who didn't want to hear about birth related items. I even changed my provider and went from a planned hospital birth to a planned home birth. And then baby #2 showed up. Again, I had a wonderful natural birth. It was such an amazing experience being at home. I had another beautiful baby girl, and I started my life as a mother of two fully expecting the birth fever to fade as it had the first time... but it didn't. The desire to read more, to know more, to talk to other women, to hear their birth stories, to share what I'd learned... It was all still there. I just had to find a way to incorporate my new passion into my life in a meaningful way. That's when I made the decision to become a childbirth educator. I took the training, read the books, did the work and became certified.

I'm just about to start my first class. I'm so excited to be able to share all I've learned. To be able to touch the lives of women, as mine was once touched. I am so grateful for this opportunity. And anxious to do a good job.