I have a secret.

I have a secret.  I guess it's not going to be a secret for long.  I'm 32 years old and I've finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up.  In the days after I had Zachariah, as I slowly came back to reality (man those drugs they give you after surgery are killer!) I realised that it wasn't supposed to be this way.  Why would God (or Mother Nature, if you prefer) make our bodies to create beautiful new life and not create a way for us to bring that life into the world?  The answer is that he didn't.  The original intent of a cesarean section was to separate a baby from a dead mother.  Sometimes that child survived, sometimes it was simply to satisfy religious edicts that a woman not be buried while she was pregnant.  Now don't misunderstand me, I KNOW that c-sections save lives.  One saved my sister's life, and her son's.  However, the national percentage for cesarean births reached a staggering 32% in 2007 (the most recent year that final data is available), which is more than double what the WHO recommends.  So I've decided to stop being pissed off about the medicalization of birth, and do something about it.  Namely, I wish to study to become a midwife.  This process is going to take me a few years.  Currently, I have a lovely son who despises bottles.

I'm not going to be able to leave him at a moment's notice.  My wonderful husband travels for a living, so I'm not sure how I'm going to juggle that with these lovelys.

But I do know that I have to try, because this was not how it was meant to be.

My first step is to be certified as a Trust Birth Facilitator.  I'm working on my training now, and hope to start running meetings by summer.  At least that way I can start to get the word out that birth is natural.  I think somewhere along the line, we've forgotten that.  If I'm stepping on any toes here, I apologise.  Please remember that I had three very medical births, so I'm preaching to myself here as much as anyone else.  I read a great article the other day about being an activist.  It basically said that people are passionate about things because they've been touched by that particular subject in a profound way.  And I have.  If you really want to know the ugly details, I could tell you about my first birth.  It would turn your stomach.  If I had known then that midwives still existed and practised, I may have come to this conclusion 13 years ago.  Regardless, I'm here now, and I'm telling you because I want to be held accountable.  I know that this is going to turn our lives upside down.  There are probably going to be days when I'm not so sure about this course of action, but I will not quit.  Because I'm sure that birth should be much more like this

and much less like this.