Birthing Utopia is back from vacation!

You may have noticed that the blog and doula services have been quiet - almost too quiet!

Birthing Utopia takes clients from September to mid June, as both myself and my back up doula work year round at our jobs with holidays in the summer with our families. I recognize that birth happens 24-7-365, but the work/life balance is important to the significant people in our lives. My husband and I talked about this when I first became a doula, as we knew it would affect our ability to travel. We like to attend outdoor festivals, camp, and basically be outside when the weather is nice...it's our family life-blood, the glue that keeps us from basically going insane over the cold winter months.

My client load is currently under review as well. I'm in "talks" with myself about my career direction, constantly trying to find alternatives to what I'm doing so that I can start being a doula more. I am hoping to get my CAPPA certification, or to at least have some births under my belt but I do not have the ability to blow off my day jobs. So it's again a struggle between work/life - I need to support the family's bare minimum financial needs and to be happy in my place of work. Unfortunately, volunteering my doula services pays more in gratitude than it does cash. Ultimately, I wish I could just be rich in gratuity.

Eventually I am hoping to see myself working in a position where my doula services are limited to single parent families and young mothers. Why, you ask? It's my life blood - it's why I got into nursing in the first place. I was a young single mother for a while. In that short /long time period my circum vitalae included various activities like dodging fists and eating ramen. We learned to survive at the base of Maslow's hierarchy and have since found a much safer and happier world. I think it "takes one to know one". All women deserve doula support, and I think the young and single mothers would appreciate a free doula who wants to be a birth helper for smiles and hugs.

This is where I am at, this moment! I mean, just like Saskatchewan's weather can change on a dime I guess my employment status could too. I've always been a mover and a shaker, not one to stay in one place for any length of time but I really soak up the experiences wherever I can.