441: doula

The journey to doula continues. My certification packages arrived in the mail last week, and I've organized a small bookcase in our house just for the thick copies of natural childbirth and lactation consulting books, the doula guides and postpartum tomes. I'm working on a little space on the internet for doula-ing, prematurely ordering business cards so I can find my three lovely women who will allow me to rehearse those doula skills (or rather, get free doula services) for certification purposes. I saved the classes until late May, just after the semester cools off, because I thought, perhaps, I ought to remember I am still getting an MFA, after all. Remember poetry? Ah, yes. That. (I still love it, still exchange poems with my dear friend weekly, am going to join in on Eireann's challenge for April, am reading those slips of books in the mornings, when the sun is slanting just right, and I don't want to neglect it. That, or my beloved students, who are the kindest, sweetest collection of students a person could want!)

The embedding is disabled, but I urge you to sneak on over to YouTube to see this remarkable birth (don't worry, you can't see any of the naughty bits). It's actually a friend of a friend's birth story, which involved a faster labor than expected, a midwife out to dinner, and a husband waiting outside for the midwife's car to drive up. Turns out, she had the baby in her bathtub, alone.

Here's a screen shot (I'm now the naughty one):


My own body enjoyed the glories of yoga this morning, though the twists and rising and falling cause my hormones to wrench, my body to object. I feel sore and at peace, though I did spend a bit of time on the phone with my husband, weeping a bit at the two steps forward, two steps back of everything. I don't usually get so flattened by this process, but there are moments when I feel broken, feel punished, feel as if I may have done something wrong to deserve this, feel as if I'll never be well again, never be able to look back and say, Oh, that was the journey, and now here I am.

But: he has promised hiking in the evenings, long walks with the dogs, more exercise, and I may have convinced him to shift his own diet too.

One last thing: have you seen The Boys Are Back? It's a sweet story. Makes you fall in love with the family you have, makes you appreciate whatever it is that can make a home feel full.