Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Saying goodbye to the past...


I can't believe AOL is closing down the member pages. I mean... I CAN believe it because without paid members providing a revenue stream there's nobody paying for all those sites to be out there. Still though, it's SAD to me that all those sites are going away. For a lot of us, those were our first attempts at web publishing.


It is interesting to look back at what I had on my AOL space. If you get to this before they take it down you can see for yourself (http://hometown.aol.com/KWilson318/index.htm). It was done with a template in Front Page that makes me cringe still. LOL But the content is there and that's why people have been complimentary about it for so long.


I checked the file manager while I was copying it all to a Word document for archiving. April 2001. Justin was a baby. We lived in Pine Mountain. September 11 hadn't happened yet. That was the day before Daren's 40th birthday. It was the day our golden retriever, Jack, got hit by a car on HWY 27. (Jack survived another few years and was fine even without the surgery they told us he would need.)


Most of the information had been assembled before on a different site that I had posted. This was just the first place that I had it all together. I was inspired to work on it while I worked on a site we did for one of our Loopies who was dealing with the first anniversary of the birth and death of her daughter. It was a site that chronicled the making of a quilt that the 20 or so of us had created and sent to Lisa.


Looking back at this site makes me remember how much I love being around birth and babies and pregnancy. A friend recently commented that "Kim gives good midwife by phone." Truth be told it was through text messages. LOL But I DO love helping people with their pregnancies and their births. I miss being around pregnant women. I miss labor.


So the question now is...what do I do about it? The ultimate goal of course is to become a certified professional midwife (CPM). Fat lot of good it will do to attain that in the state of Georgia right now because of our archaic practices here. See...the thing is...while it is legal to have your baby at home if you want to, it's still not totally legal to have a qualified attendant. Crazy right? We have to DO something about it.


The Department of Public Health’s Midwifery Task Force is meeting to determine whether or not the state should once again license direct entry midwives (most of whom are now CPMs) since the law states that a licensed midwife can practice even though they stopped handing out licenses in the early 70s. Again...crazy.


But whatever... I can't realistically drop everything in my life right now and start studying midwifery anyway. I have to pay my bills and finish school and get my kids raised. Maybe when Justin is older and I get married or hit the lottery...then I can go back to doing what it is I really love.


For now though...just be nice to me when I start asking questions about your birth or your plans for birth. I promise I'm not judging you for doing things your way. I'm trying to be helpful. And if you have any questions...I really WILL find the answers if I don't already know them.