ICAN do it

I have been busy with ICAN stuff a lot since our board meeting last week. Maybe I should say proficiently busy because some of the projects I have been working on... and off... for a while are coming together nicely. I have been working on the International aspect of ICAN since or Strategic Planning Retreat last fall and hitting a lot of road blocks along the way. This week, however, a lot of those roadblocks dissolved suddenly with a phone call from an ICAN member who is also an intelectual property and non-profit lawyer and a long promised fax from Hedy Nuriel, Executive Director of LLLI. Now we are getting somewhere on this project and hope to soon have that support in place for our non-US chapters.

Also this week a women expecting her fifth child and wanting a VBA4C called ICAN. Being in Ontario, she couldn't find a caregiver to "allow" her a trial of labour, so she was wondering if we could help. In case you don't know, midwifery is funded in Ontario and unfortunately one of the factors that midwives conseded on in order to obtain funding was to give up automomy. This means that if a midwife is unable to find a physican who will back her on "high risk" clients like they percieve VBAC to be, then they are not legally able to attend the birth. This then rules out the two neighbouring provinces as well, so she needed to (and was willing) to travel to a caregiver who was willing to attend her.

I called around and found her four midwives who were willing to help, one in Halifax, one in Regina, one in Edmonton, and one in the US. She was so happy to hear she had options like this and has tons of family in Halifax so chose to go there for this baby's birth. She is due in September and I can't wait to hear how everything goes.

On the educational side of things, given that my official title is Education Director, we are working on four major projects at the moment. Our accreditation program, a new main brochure, a cesarean recovery brochure and a VBAC fact sheet are all in various stages of completion. My new assistant Claudia Villeneuve has taken the accreditation program to run with and Laura Maples, the most amazing graphic designer I have had the pleasure of knowing, has said yes to helping with the design of the two brochures! That allows me to focus on the VBAC fact sheet which we have needed updating for too long. Lots of work but when it is something you love to do it certainly doesn't feel like work!