Too Late For Me?

     So I missed my calling. Years ago, as a nineteen year-old, I chose to pursue a career in teaching. I wasn't sure which career direction to pursue since law school had become quickly unappealing with 90 hour work weeks for a measly $30K a year. Besides, Los Angeles has too many lawyers anyway. (Sorry my lawyer friends - I don't mean you in particular). My mom was dying at the time as well and teaching seemed to be a secure job route that was somewhat appealing. I had no interest in medicine whatsoever. Blood-yuck. Body parts, especially mangled-totally gross. Bodily fluids - icky. Moaning, hurting, whining people - forget about it!
     And then I got pregnant with my 6th child. I knew she'd be my last. For some odd reason, I was intensely interested in all things pregnancy related. After she was born, her traumatic birth made me search high and low and far and wide for answers as to the medical nature of what happened. After reading countless posts from labor and delivery nurses, midwives, and obstetricians, as well as many books by birth professionals, I became intensely interested in pregnancy and childbirth, and women's health issues overall. How odd, it seemed. And yet my knowledge base grew and my interest in medical things increased significantly. This care and compassion toward women and their health issues became heightened in me. A woman would tell me an experience she had health -wise, or pregnancy and childbirth-wise, and I would be looking it up on the internet to understand more about it.
     I found myself looking into the nursing program at PCC and various doula programs. I started this blog. While continuing to read many websites and blogs about pregnancy and childbirth, I realized I would never have the patience or self-control to be a doula. I would be too tempted to speak up against dcotors and nurses about "suboptimal" care I felt my client was getting. But most of all....
     Once I saw a baby born I wouldn't be able to help myself. I would want to be those hands guiding that baby out, and encouraging the baby's father to be as involved as I could get him in catching his baby. I would want to help that woman and her husband own their birth experience as much as they could and be the guiding expertise and care in that woman's pregnancy, labor and delivery, and postpartum period. It would be one of the greatest joys and challenges I would ever do on a regular basis. Not unlike motherhood in general, actually.
     And yet, it's too late for me. I've done extensive research on this issue as well. I'd have a couple of pre-req's at PCC, and then I'd enter their two year nursing program. Then, the Nizhoni Midwifery Institutehttp://www.midwiferyatnizhoni.com/ would be another 3 intense years of midwifery training. The Nizhoni Institute, based in San Diego, is the only California Medical Board-approved midwife training school of its kind in the entire state.  I would want to be state certified and so I'd go there.
     However, these are all the reasons I don't ever foresee being a midwife:
1) Financial cost
2)Time Cost
3) Emotional Cost
4)Mental Cost
5)I have six daughters who need me to be present in their lives in all the ways mentioned above. I would not spend those costs on a career and sacrifice my daughters' well being and their needs. I don't pass judgement on woman who do choose careers - not at all. But that road is not for me. At least not now.
     I am open to all sorts of possibilities, however. You never know what the future might hold. For now, I'm holding my daughters close and putting their needs first. We'll see where my medical and women's health interests take me. In the big picture, whatever is meant to be will happen.