This is NEW to me

OK, so I'm a college-degreed journalist. I've written my entire life - one way or the other - and find much satisfaction is feeling words flow. But the whole "blog" is new to me. I can relate to essays, to printed stories of all kinds, to the concept of a book, even. But until recently, I didn't even really know what a "blog" was - and I'm not sure I yet do. (We'll find out, eh?)

I'll write here largely about my work in childbirth. Sure, that'll be interesting to some people. It's thrilling for me. You see, there's something so sacred, so primitive, so utterly *raw* about childbirth that it's hard to not be excited about it. It's like looking out at the ocean - it's amazingly powerful and fearsome yet soothing and gentle, if only because it's so, well, *natural*. And it's natural childbirth about which I teach and in which I often participate. Finding a way *out* of that natural experience seems odd to me - though I get it why women do so.

So, guarding all privacy laws as best as I'm able to, I'll tell you about what I learn. Because I do. Learn. Every. Birth. Something. New. Something great. Something either profoundly deep or amazingly simple. Birthing is like that. It's so dang complicated but wildly simple.

The last couple of births I've been to I've seen this: young mothers who have transformed in little more than a year from being newlyweds giddy with playing house to being seasoned young *parents*. For the first times in my short birth-work career, I've gotten to attend the *second* births of girls not even yet age 25. I watched them become mothers the first time - with all its pain and stretching and breathing and moaning. (One of the sweet little things took to whimpering. She was so tiny.) So this second time around, whoa, they looked, well, *older*, yes, but wiser, too. (That's way too many commas in one sentence.) They just looked like mothers. Mothers. Mothers.