So, what would you say if your husband suggested taking a family gap year, a whole year off to travel the world with the kids – no job, no school, just the four of us on the road? Sounds like a dream come true, I know, and that’s how I’m looking at it now. But, when he first floated the idea, my reaction was starkly different. It’s not that I don’t love to travel – I do, with great passion. I’ve geared my entire adult life around exploration of other lands, languages and cultures. Since my first trip abroad in 1983, I’ve visited more places than I can count, lived in six countries outside of my own and have tried to learn, with varying degrees of success, seven languages other than English. I’ve never known myself to hesitate when faced with the prospect of a new adventure.
What was it, then, that prevented me from embracing the gap year idea with full-blown enthusiasm? It was the other passion in my life, my vocation, if you will, the one that keeps my days (and, often, nights) filled with research, heart-to-heart talks, backrubs, dance and tears of joy – being with women in pregnancy, birth and those tender first weeks of parenting. I couldn’t envision leaving my doula work for an entire year. No births to witness in sacred silence? No Dancing for Birth classes to lead? No breastfeeding questions to answer in the wee hours? And after working so hard to do my doula training and get my business up and running? I didn’t like the idea one bit.
Shalimar Bagh, Kashmir, India
After spending several weeks in denial, stewing over the subject, I decided it was time to start packing my bags. What made me change my mind? Two things, really. The first was the thought of intensive, 24/7 time with our two kids, who are lurking around the edges of full-blown teendom. When your kids are small and you’re having one of ‘those’ days, you’d struggle to believe that you could miss your kids so acutely when they’re at school (or up in their rooms with the doors closed). But I do miss them, every aspect of them, and I can’t wait to spend an entire year together with the kids and my husband.
The second reason that I could fathom walking away from doula work in 2015 is the chance to connect with other doulas and birth workers everywhere my travels take me. In November, I spent a blissful week in Byron Bay at the Midwifery Today conference. It was so inspiring to meet birth workers from all over – Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, the US, the UK, Nicaragua and more – and learn about new techniques as well as time-honoured traditions. So many of these wise women extended offers for me to visit them at their homes, their birth centres, their midwifery practices. I’m awed by the opportunity to share best practices in birth work and to learn about the challenges faced in maternity care in different communities of the world.
Sibling harmony, Taipei, Taiwan
In early January 2015, we kicked off our great family gap year. Our first few months were spent in Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and India. Now we’re at the second of seven stops in Europe, before we head to North America in May and then spend the last four months of the year in Latin America. Will such an ambitious trip be overwhelming at times? Absolutely. Will all that intensive family togetherness occasionally drive us around the bend? Without a doubt. Will I miss my clients, past and potential, and my nurturing circle of doula friends? The thought brings tears to my eyes. But, will all of this be offset by the tremendous potential for personal and professional growth? Will I be better able to serve women and babies in future with the information and experiences I gather in my 2015 wanderings, connecting the dots from one birth worker to another? I can’t wait to find out.
So far I’ve had the honor of spending time with birthworkers in Taipei, Tokyo, Kashmir (in the far north of India), Bangalore (in the south of India) and Zurich. I’ll be sharing highlights from those conversations in future posts, so watch this space. If you are or know a birth worker (doula, midwife, childbirth educator, lactation consultant, maternity care advocate, parent, etc.) who’d be open to meeting and swapping stories, whether face-to-face or virtually, please get in touch. And please share this blog with anyone who might like to follow our travels in 2015, especially anyone interested in what’s happening in birth in different parts of the world.
