Introduction

Hello!
My name is Lee and I aspire to be a midwife.
I live in Seattle, am currently a nanny, and I blame everything on my hormones.

Seriously. Everything.

Why do I want to become a midwife and why on earth would I want to blog about it? Well, my life has been a series of random career choices. When I was little, I mean Elementary School little, I wanted to be a lawyer. That lasted ALL THE WAY THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL! Seriously. I had it all planned out, even how to pay for it! I was to take 4 years Spanish in high school, get accepted to Arizona State, live with my uncle or one of my cousins down there, work as a court translator, graduate, take over my dad's law firm, and live happily ever after. I had it all planned out and things were going super, until I realized that law was BORING! Not just a little boring, but a lot boring. Not one part of it was interesting to me. So instead of going to wonderful land of sunburns and sand, I stayed in the damp Northwest to go to community college. Long story short, I moved from *little hick town in Southern Washington you've probably never heard of* to Seattle, eventually took a year off school, and was unemployed for a year. In my unemployed, uneducated state of hysteria, I considered many different career paths, hardly got out of bed, and became BFF's with my cat and Hulu. Here is how I came to midwife, the abridged version.

Cultural Anthropologist: Travel to remote parts of the world, study the people for like 10 years at a time, come back, write a book or two, teach a class or two, and die of starvation in the process due to being a moral vegetarian. I originally thought it would be amazing to study rural tribes of Africa, but now I think I would just end up crying, telling them that cows have feelings and families too, and not to kiss me on the mouth until they have brushed their teeth.(a rule I frequently remind my boyfriend of).
Cruise Ship Captain: awesome, awesome, don't really have to talk to people, gone for 9 months at a time, HOLY SHIT GONE FOR 9 MONTHS AT A TIME!! (I have a niece that I'm addicted to and an amazing boyfriend that puts up with me). And also, trig is hard and it sucks, but apparently you can't just rely on GPS. Screw trig, and boats too.
Nurse: I watched a lot of hospital dramas when I was unemployed and not going to school. Grey's Anatomy, Mercy, Nurse Jackie, Private Practice. Oh yeah. Watched them all, every episode of every season. I thought, hey, helping people, fixing things (people), can't be outsourced, people always get sick, and how hot I would look in scrubs!?  I didn't want to do the whole go to school forever and be perfect to be a doctor. Nursing seemed awesome! Until I remembered, oh wait, I really can't stand stupid people. So example, drunk guy comes in because he chopped his foot off with a chainsaw. IDIOT. Go bleed somewhere else! Want me to preemptively lob off the other one? That would just be silly. It's not really my place to judge who gets healthcare based on IQ, and the origin of their injury. OMG BABIES! Anything that happens to a baby is not it's fault! Babies don't talk back! So, babies...healthcare... maternity ward! Woo hoo! I could finally have an excuse to constantly be talking about the reproductive cycle ( I am secretly obsessed). But wait. I don't know how I feel about hospital births. All the drugs, all the contraptions, that thing that goes "bing!" C-sections. eeehhhh. Maybe I will just be unemployed forever.
Midwife: Oh thank heavens! Holistic Medicine, all natural births, babies, reproductive cycle, homeopathic remedies! Sign me up! (do I still get to wear scrubs?)  Also, I love the empowering effect that taking charge of your own birth has! I have always been huge into women empowerment, and have taken EVERY women/gender/queer study class that both of my community colleges have offered. The more I did research on midwifery (I still giggle over "midwifery", it sounds made up and I love it!), the more I knew it was right for me.

Also, in the last segment of Career Roulette, I had gotten myself a job! Actually, within two months I got three jobs, laid off of one, worked two at the same time, and violently quit one that actually made this (studied a lot of) anthropologist a little bit racists. Lesson learned: never work for a Muslim during Ramadan. I am a white, American, woman, and he was a older, hungry, cranky, male Muslim. Our worlds clashed horrifically, and I promptly quit.

The final job that I liked, and that stuck and the one that I am at right now is FANTASTIC! I am an overnight nanny for twins what are 3 months old today! They have doubled their age since I started working and I just can't believe it. I love being a nanny, the whole baby thing is awesome, the parents are amazingly nice, it pays well, I am constantly appreciated, and I get SMILES at 3AM. Seriously! If either J or C wake up at any time of the night, no matter how long it takes me to wrestle the bottle warmer into submission, they smile at me! I don't know about you, but if I was screaming at the world halfway through sleeping because I was hungry, and someone was taking FOREVER to get me what I wanted, when I finally got it, I would purposely barf in their hair or down the back of their shirt. Not J or C, they smile. Like I am the greatest person on earth. Like it was my idea to wake them up for a secret midnight snack that mom doesn't know about. Like I had put chocolate milk in the bottles instead of breast milk. It is the most adorable, heart melting experience, and it happens almost every single night. I usually sit and read to pass the "down time" when I am not cleaning bottles, or putting a baby back to sleep, but sometimes I catch myself staring off and listening to the baby monitor. C coo's while sleeping, while J grunts, how could I possibly pay attention to anything else? What if a grunt turned into a choke? What if a coo turned into a gasp? I quickly learned the difference between noises, could tell which child what making what noise and why. I could even hear the difference in their farts. Yup. If a fart came across the monitor, I knew which one did it. I am so happy working as a nanny, and as a nanny for this specific family that I have to resist telling my boyfriend all about my night at work when I get home...at 7AM. He did a lot of swatting and grunting early on.

There are a couple of side effects from working as a nanny, and working from 11pm to 6am. Here is a list:

1. I work vampire hours, and in the rare event that the sun shows it's evil flesh-burning face in Seattle, I tend to hide under the blankets, hiss, or spontaneously combust.
2. I have spit-up in my hair, smell like breast milk, and have no child to bring with me on the bus as an excuse.
3. I have the urge to offer my assistance with ANY child in a 5 mile radius. I hear a baby cry, my ears perk up like a dog, my head swivels around 360 degrees until I locate the source, and asses the situation. It's gotten bad. It is okay to sing songs with crabby children on the bus, it is not okay to ask "do you want me to try?" with outstretched arms to the mother with an infant in the grocery store. (actually happened, I should have a shock collar.)
4. Everyone in my family thinks that I am going baby crazy.

Holy shit, I sat here and blogged ALL NIGHT. What an excessive intro. Like my introduction also included chapters 1-8. I apologize. I will try to make sure my next posts don't need spark notes.