Until very recently, I thought I wanted to teach. I've wanted to grow up to be so many things before, but teaching has always been on the list of what I wanted to do. I guess I liked my teachers. (For the most part, anyway. I do have a history of yelling at them, which ended me up on suspension and in the principle's office more than once. That was pre-Christ.) It always made sense to me that teachers were always going to be needed and I loved school, so why not just stay in it for my entire life? Then I saw what my husband went through as an elementary school teacher.
For at least the first three weeks of school, my husband would work until about 11pm. He wanted to make sure that with all these budget cuts and layoffs, he boss knew that Eli was dedicated and good at teaching. (Does it infuriate anyone else that teachers get paid so little? America's super power status is going to dwindle fast if nobody wants to teach our kids anymore because they can't support themselves on the salary. But that's a blog for another day.) On top of always working later than everyone else (even the janitors went home before he did most nights), Eli was made to sign up for extracurricular activities within the school. And actual grades don't really matter anymore, though they are still required, what matters is standardized testing. Eli would literally spend a week trying to test all 26 of his students. Yes, 26 students with one teacher. This is nothing to speak of the calls he had make to CPS on a regular basis and just the work it takes to teach 2nd graders how to act in a classroom setting! So, you add all this up and you hardly get to teach it seems like. And when you are actually teaching, there can't be too much enjoyment from it since you're thinking about the next thing you have to do for the school or the state. It was so discouraging to watch my husband stress out about what should have been an exhilarating experience. So discouraging, in fact that I began thinking that maybe I didn't want to teach. It wasn't until I got pregnant with my son that I started to develop a new passion. (Just so everyone is clear, I would way rather be a country star than go to school for anything...but alas, I lack rhythm and contacts. lol)
After going through my first pregnancy with no clue about anything, and then doing more research with my second, a passion burst out of me to tell women that their bodies were made for this. That laboring and delivering a child with no intervention unless absolutely medically necessary, is SO much better. I didn't know until after my second was born that being in control of the whole process made such a difference. Well, I guess there was one point during delivery of my second that I felt like I no idea what the heck was happening, but it was short lived. The difference between my hospital birth, and my birth center/water tub birth is vast. So vast that I am not sure that I can truly get to the heart of it.
It is with this new-found knowledge and passion that I am about to embark on a journey towards the empowerment of women to deny the drug-filled interventions of a hospital birth.
Shout out to my sister for telling me to watch, "The Business of Being Born," a documentary on the subject of home-births vs. hospital births. It was this documentary that first inspired me to really look into the possibilities.
Let me also say that for some women, it is medically necessary to have their baby at a hospital. And for some, they prefer it. I don't want women to feel like I judge them for whatever decision they make for themselves and their babies. I just women to know that there are other options. I was absolutely clueless when I was pregnant the first time. I wish someone had told me.
