Teen Pregnancy Retreat

One of the products of my time away from my blog was to work with our Immanuel Healthy Family Ministry team. Our brand new birth doula, Deanna, has an incredible vision and heart for supporting mothers, especially teens. Though neither of us were teen mothers, we have been working professionally with women who were teen mothers, all of whom kept and chose to raise their children. Her vision of a Teen Pregnancy Retreat is an incredible one that I am very excited to be a part of and we are working towards funding with our first retreat set for next spring.

Our vision is of a nurturing weekend program providing empowerment, encouragement, and support for pregnant teen mothers. This program is designed to provide informational and emotional supports for expectant mothers between the ages of 12 and 18.

Our program looks to acknowledge each woman’s unique concerns and provide her with a nurturing and supportive retreat atmosphere where she can grown and learn effective ways to manage her current stress and prepare for those she will face in the future. Our vision is to enhance her wellbeing through empowering emotional and educational opportunities, professional prenatal services, nutritious meals, a resource guide and additional gifts. Our goal is to provide as many retreats as needed to allow all interested teen mothers in Parkland county attendance.

Now for the exciting part...

Preliminary Agenda
Friday Evening
Orientation, meet and greet with informal icebreakers, healthy cocktails, room allocation and moving in.

Saturday
Breakfast – nutritious breakfast with two options
Educational/informational sessions:

• Birth doula & Midwife – birth options
• Chiropractor – importance of spinal health during pregnancy
• Dietician – importance of nutrition during pregnancy
• Lactation Counselor – breastfeeding basics

Lunch – soup/salad type light lunch
Relaxation session
Educational/informational sessions:

• Massage therapist – importance of relaxation, touch and alternative therapies
• Counselor – emotional support & recovery
• Postpartum doula – physical support & recovery, baby basics

Dinner – hearty high protein dinner
Pampering session
Blessingway

Sunday

Brunch – nutritious brunch buffet
Glamour/prenatal photography session
High Tea - invite close friend, boyfriend, mother to share tea with

Being a Busy Bee & Career Options

I know I have been quiet, it has been an incredibly busy these last three weeks. ICAN's Strategic Planning Retreat preparation took up the bulk of the first week, the next week I focused on my new position with ICAN as their new International Director along with the online Childbirth Education class I will be teaching through GBI starting in January, while CDA planning and projects took up all of last week.

After a lot of discussion and careful prayer and thought, we have decided to follow our original course of action with Allan pursuing his goal of becoming a Wal-Mart store manager rather than step back and pursue another career. With the huge exception of our builder giving us an attractive offer to join his company before Allan is promoted, which will likely be next spring. If not, then we will move at least twice before we stettle again and those moves will be anywhere in Western Canada, though we do have somewhat of a choice as to where that is.

I am excited about our future, even if I am not ready to move quite yet. I knew that we would have to move at least four times to get to where Allan was able to settle us with Wal-Mart and that is OK. If we veer off that path into home building, that is awesome too. What that will mean for my career I am not certain, but it gives me time to plan and prepare for next year. God has been gracious to our family thus far and I know our future will be bright indeed.

Dilemmas, dilemmas

Wow this week has been an interesting one! Just when we are leaning towards the path of moving home, the Lord adds more reasons for us to stay here and perservere. Now perservere is not a hardship on my part as I love it here, despite the distance from family. Rather it is a test of faith for my husband who is searching for his own occupational answers.

The most exciting reason came in a phone call last week from the GRIT Program director telling us that Brendan has been accepted into their program. GRIT is an acronym for Getting Ready for Inclusion Today and provides one-on-one support in our home and community for Brendan by a team of specialists who support his Developmental Specialist (DS) who is hired to work specifically with his needs. Our interview went wonderfully with the program director on Thursday. Today we will meet their Coordinator and Speech Language Pathologist who will have a play date with Brendan to better assess his needs and he will meet his potential DS tomorrow for a compatibility play date.

Another, less obvious reason, is our ongoing work with our builder. He has several great projects that we have been working on such as building signs (an earlier blog), frost walling, deck railing and so forth. We have turned this into an incentive program for the boys and for ourselves for future things like getting the basement finished, Trileisure Center passes and holidays next summer.

In many ways I have been grieving about potentially losing the work I have been doing with Immanuel and my proposed Healthy Family Ministry (babbled about in several previous blogs). The proposal passed unanimously at church council and I am very excited about our possibly having an amazingly awesome new birth doula join our team from my last training. Our team is almost ready to run with all but one position filled and our launch being planned. I know this ministry will not only sustain itself, but grow without me, I just don't want to leave it this early!

And finally, my own work in training and mentoring doulas, childbirth educators and lactation counsellors. I have access to the perfect facility and my personalized small classes are becoming sought after when the only competition I have is Grant McEwan's birth doula class where 30 students are taught at a time, making the classes very impersonal. Don't get me wrong, I attended their very first doula training class they held and enjoyed it, but I would have given my eye teeth to have the personalized training I am able to provide now.

I should go and clean a bit before the GRIT ladies come today, oh and I have to phone a mentoring doula back. Salut for now.

Work Bliss

How many are able to not only enjoy their job, but love it? I have done many things from sell real estate to working in an autobody shop to management. Diverse occupations as I continued to seek a job that I could tolerate, nevermind like. Only after I moved to mothering did I come upon my dream job, that of teaching aspiring birth professionals. That in itself was an adventure too, moving from my own first birth experience, a traumatic iatrogenic cesarean section, to accredited trainer. Suffice as to say, the journey was an amazing learning adventure and each workshop I teach inspires and fulfills me.

This weekend I taught another accredited childbirth doula workshop, the first step towards certification through the Global Birth Institute. Each student was so amazing and I am humbled by their presence in my class, of their untrusting their first training to me. And diverse! One of my students this weekend was a professional singer, another is a mother of three who just moved to our community three weeks ago, another still is a single professional with two jobs and a wonderful sixteen year old son. We laughed and cried and shared openly about our births, our fears, our frustrations and our biases. We also learned a great deal, me about them and they learned so much about pregnancy, birth, babies and the business skills to help them enjoy their own dream job successfully. We left as friends, all eager to continue sharing and learning and growing. I will continue to support each student as she works towards certification and beyond as her mentor... a role I so love as I see each continue to grow.

I am going to sleep very happy tonight, thanking God for each step that brought me to this dream occupation I have been blessed with.

Mom's Horse of a Different Colour

My Mom has been helping me this weekend, watching over her four grandchildren (aka my herd) so I thought I would tell her of my blog... what blogs are, who my blogging friends are... we had a great conversation! My Mom is a horse lover, so she took the "What Colour Horse are You?" test. Drum roll...


Dark Bay

What Horse Color Are You?