Midterm

Well here I am, nearly mid semester at FSTM. I am really enjoying myself (for the most part) in class, despite the fact that a lot of it is review for me. I enjoy the atmosphere I am surrounded by (mostly) while at school, and I have begun to even enjoy my overnights in Gainesville (it almost feels like a slumber party every week!)

I am dealing with other stuff outside of school, but I'd rather not talk about any of that today. I haven't been keeping up with my blog as much as I would like to, and I really hope to be able to change that here in the near future, as I get my new groove on.

My daughter has her First Reconciliation coming up next month, she is very excited and moving right along to have her First Communion next May! My big girl!! I also got her a new bed and desk (it is a loft bed) and a mattress that is just heavenly, I wish I could sleep on it every night!! I will likely buy my boys each the same mattress as well, I am very pleased with that purchase.

More big news....My boys have their own bedroom now!! For the first time since I threw my exhusband out, we are using two bedrooms!! My boys are in one room and my daughter and I are in another room!! This is really a huge, life changing thing for us!! I will be sleeping in a bed again soon, thanks to one of my good friends who is giving me a full bed!! Yay!!

Also in the news for me, I just had a birthday!! It was threatening to turn into a depressing weekend for me, but alas my BFF pulled through for me! He treated me to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner, and then we stayed up late watching movies and snuggling on the couch like we used to in high school!! oooh the memories LOL! My children also had a little party for me, it was very sweet, and my brother gave me an organically grown, whole, dried out loofah squash (he grew them himself) now I can make tons of loofahs for myself, and I have a zillion seeds to plant my own next spring!! yay!!

Also on the "news" front, I made another appointment with Tanya Kell (our homeopath) and she has prescribed my daughter and my youngest son constitutionals, I will be ordering those this week and hoping that they help with some issues (including Tori's sensitive stomach and Bobby's awful allergies!) I love our homeopath so much, she asked about me first and gave me another remedy for myself before even moving on to the kids (which was who the appointment was for!!) If you are in need of a homeopath, I recommend her highly!! She also does phone consults (not just in person) so even though she is in Nashville, you can have appointments with her if you aren't!! www.tanyakell.com

I am going up to TN/AL in a few weeks both to get the rest of my stuff from there and also to go to a little bit of the MANA conference, including (hopefully!) the ROAST of the farm midwives!! FUN!!

My Decision is......

I told you all to expect my decision by Tuesday this week, and I am happy to announce that I have come to a decision!!!

And my decision is........................






That............................





We will be...................................





Moving back to Florida!! Yes you read that right, Misty is leaving the land where she's always wanted to be to come back to the land she never wanted to be in again so that she can go to one of the best midwifery schools in the nation. Worth it? I think so!

Look for more posts soon!!!

Sweet Summer Songs and Whispers in the Wind

I told a friend and midwife mentor that I was going to use this time over the summer to pray, and focus, and decide where it is my future is taking me. I have been doing a lot of praying, and a lot of contemplating, and still have yet to come up with an answer to my questions. A once good friend told me that when making difficult decisions sometimes it is best to just throw all logic out the window and have faith in God's bigger plan for us. I used to have no problems following this advice - when it was just me. Now my decisions, however, are bigger than just me. The happiness and futures of three other amazing people have been trusted to me to help grow, and develop, and turn into amazing adults from the amazing children that they already are. When other people's fates are also in your hands, especially people whom you love with a primal, unexplainable completeness, decisions become harder to make. And, it seems, I find it harder to only trust in Faith alone.

The single hardest thing I have ever had to do since entering into this amazing role of "mother" is to make dcisions for my children. Even the most mundane seeming decision can turn into a stressful situation. I toil over what pediatrician/dentist/etc to use. I toil over how to raise them religiously. I toil over what school to put them in. I toil over whether to homeschool or not. I toil over how staying with their father would affect them. I toiled over how leaving their father would affect them. Vaccinations. Circumcision (or the lack of). Parenting styles. Cribs or no cribs. Disposable diapers or cloth? Wool or PUL? Work or Stay home? Finish a college degree or wait until they are grown? Follow my dreams? This becomes ever more trying as a single mother because now there is no more joint decision making. Now I am solely responsible. I am solely accountable for the raising of these little beings I call my children.

I realized while doing all of this praying and meditating this summer, that it is all like one sweet summer song. The life that I draw, that I create, that I write about. The life that I choose to make for my children. This is not the ideal life that I pictured myself and my children in 9 years ago when first starting my family. I believe that children need *two* parents. God chose to make it so that we cannot procreate without both sexes and both people are valuable in the upbringing. However, not everyone takes their commitment seriously, and I could no longer keep my marriage than a womb can keep a child past its time. After my marriage was over I was hurt and depressed and longing for something that once was. I denied to everyone, even to my self, that I ever loved my ex husband. I was so full of disgust for him at that point. But it isn't true. I did love him, very much. And he took advantage of me. And he lied to me. And now I am dealing with the consequences of his actions and inactions by raising three amazing children without him.

But I will not let it discourage me. And I will not get stuck in old patterns once again. I am a strong woman, with a strong desire to do what is right by my children, and so I believe that I will be given enough wisdom to know what is right and what is wrong for them. After all, they are my children, who were knit together in my womb. Whom I loved before they were even there. Whom I loved since my very beginnings. I no longer remember a time when I did not have love for them, when they were not a part of my life.

The wind whispered to me one day, and showed me a glimpse of my daughter years from now. Having married a man just like her father, and sitting alone one night, her own children in bed, crying silently by a fire. The vision weighed on my heart so heavily that I knew at that very moment I had to change things. For her. And for my boys, so they would not grow up to be men just like their father. And so we left.

Now I am left with another major decision. I have to decide how much I am willing to take away from my children, in order to give them a better life in the future. Am I willing to take away the beautiful house, the 1 acre of land, the horses next door, the peace of mind that allows me to have the children play in the neighborhood until the street light (there is only one!) comes on without worrying about strangers lifting them and taking them away? Am I willing to take away the small town, the life I've been working on building for them the last year, the friends they've made, the moderate climate, the occasional snow? Am I willing to move away from the one place I've longed to live for so long (a selfish question, I know)? Am I willing to bring them closer to their father, closer to the very influence I wanted to get them away from?

What are the good things we get in exchange you might ask? Three years from now (about) I would earn a license to practice midwifery in Florida. A climate for midwifery that will hopefully still be more positive than it is in Alabama. I would be able to earn more of a living in Florida than I ever could operating in Tennessee or Alabama (where it is still a class 3 misdemeanor). I could, perhaps, get the children and I out on our own. No longer have to rely on family for a roof over our head or water for our baths. That, ultimately, is my goal. Can I reach that goal successfully in Tennessee? Probably. If I gave up midwifery. Can I give up midwifery? No.

So, this is the decision that I must toil over this summer. And really, a decision can't be made at all until I hear back from FSTM one way or the other, which I have not yet. In the mean time, I will continue to listen to the whispers in the wind.

New Friends, New Perspectives

It's always good to make new friends. I would say that over the course of the last two weeks, I have made more new friends than I ever could have dreamed. What I am learning is that I have had these friends without realizing it for the last nine months. They have been thinking about me, worrying about me, and trying to figure out when to make their presence known to me for quite a while now. Sometimes it is just nice to know that people - even practically complete strangers - care enough to think about you. Even though we have a common bond, it still is meaningful to me.

So now I have these new friends, whom I didn't even know that I have. And I have, as a result, begun to "put my toe in the water" in the Alabama birth community a bit more now than I have since I moved here. I'm deciding that I really rather like it here, despite it all, and that even if I leave for Florida to go to school, I will probably be back some day. After all, Alabama has been in my heart for a *long* time.

It is also good to know that I am not crazy. If someone thinks the whole world is crazy..chances are more likely that it is that single person and not the whole world. I have never really been in a situation where I was defamed and slandered on a professional level and I do have to say, it isn't fun! I will say, though, that I am not surprised that I have been. If there is one thing I know after being submerged in midwifery for so long, it is that some midwives can be really nasty, vindictive, and awful to other midwives. I have a theory that some women, no matter the organization, can be like this to each other.

Even though the person who is slandering me professionally believes (and doesn't hesitate to tell people!) that I will in return "lash out" against and slander her both privately and publicly, I absolutely will not. I am a better person than that, and have not a single reason to do so. Her true colors come out to people all on their own. Many people before me saw them, and many people after me will too. And some people who were there while I was there have already seen them. She doesn't need my help exposing them.

I will though, encourage each and every one of you when looking for a midwife to consider finding a practitioner who has written protocols; who has informed consent documents; who has a *proven* track record of happy clients within the local birthing community; who has a reasonable transfer rate; who can keep assistants, apprentices, students, and employees longer than 6-9 months; who runs a clean, healthy, successful business; Who uses sterile technique and has infection control protocols; who has another midwife there to back her up. Find out how many of her clients are *repeat* clients. If the number is low, there is probably good reason.

And, to my fellow students out there, learn from my mistakes. Put your "Toe in the water" as one of my new friends says, before jumping all in with a potential preceptor. Guard yourself, and make sure it is a situation you are sure you want to be in before you get into it. If you are afraid to ask questions or speak up, it is probably not a healthy preceptor/apprentice relationship. If you speak up anyway and get stomped all over it is *definitely* not a healthy preceptor/apprentice relationship. Make sure that your preceptor is competent enough to teach you before you rely on her. I know this might seem like a hard thing to figure out, but you will know. If your gut starts telling you something just isn't fitting right in the picture, listen to it. CONTACT HER FORMER APPRENTICES to find out what they thought, and how their relationship with her went. Don't just take her side of the story. MOST importantly, IMO, if you are moving into an area where you are *not* familiar with the local birthing community, submerge yourself in the local birth and natural parenting community FIRST and see what the feelings are as a whole of the particular midwife. If more people dislike vs. like her, you might not want to work with her. Remember, every midwife is going to have someone who doesn't like her, I am speaking more along the lines of *most* people not liking their experiences with her.

so anyway, there are my words of wisdom for the day. I hope someone learns from them.

Getting Ready

So the kids and I leave in only 19 days for Florida. I am spending the remainder of these days getting ready for the trip and packing in such a way that I can bring down the maximum amount of stuff possible during this trip. I hope to bring their bikes down now that all three are riding on two wheels, so that they can bike ride at their grandpa's house (he always ends up watching them for my ex-husband, often).

I have been anxiously awaiting my letter from FSTM. Though they did tell us that it could take as long as mid June to get a letter from them, I keep praying for more on the earlier than later side of things. I am on pins and needles and sort of in limbo until this decision is known to me, and I hate it when my life is left hanging like this, dependent on other people's decisions. I have instituted a plan B in case I am not accepted, but lets hope I don't have to go there.

Lisa from MTB asked me to come to South Carolina for the next skills weekend that she will be hostessing so that I can teach students there how to use moodle, and so that I can help Lisa learn moodle in preparation for turning it all over to her before I start FSTM. I am hoping to make it to the skills weekend, though I am currently seeking anyone who might want to car pool there with me to help me save on gas money. I am strapped for cash right now until my prerequisites for FSTM have been met.

In the mean time, I have just been cleaning and packing, and making new friends (what's that about? I am about to leave the area but yet keep making new friends as I go along!! I am beginning to see the sisterhood of midwives in Huntsville that I was carefully guarded from while I've been here...and I am deciding they are pretty amazing women.)

I am also faced with a difficult decision regarding my oldest son for next year if we move back to Florida. I realize he is way ahead of his classmates in Tennessee and that Florida public schools are even more behind than Tennessee public schools are. Soooooo....now I am faced with pushing to have him accelerated into 5th grade. I know that I could win my case about it, but I wonder if it is the right decision to make. Here in TN they wanted to accelerate him this year but I would not let them...however I am second guessing that decision now. I am going to buy him a Big Fourth Grade Book for the summer time and see how he does. If he flies through it, I will ask that they accelerate him, since he cannot attend Good Shepherd Catholic School until he's been in a Florida public school for a year.

Alabama Midwifery Bill!

Its not too late to make a difference in Alabama!!! Read the midwifery bill here: http://alisondb.legislature.state.al.us/acas/searchableinstruments/2010rs/bills/sb414.htm

And then call your congresspeople and tell them to vote YES to SB414!! Don't live in Alabama? Know someone who does? Ask them to call!! Don't know anyone that does? Call ANYWAY!! Many people called Mississippi legislatures who did not even live in MS and helped to make a difference and STOP the awful law making midwifery illegal!! ALABAMA NEEDS TO HEAR FROM *YOU*!!!!! CALL NOW!!!