Opening doors!

God is so awesome! He has been opening so many doors recently for me in regards to the doula class. Firstly, He has blessed me financially! I was anticipating having the money for the class by early May, but God has already provided all but $100 between my paychecks and birthday money! I'm just astounded! I did not expect to get nearly as much birthday money as I did! He is so good, and I want to thank ALL of my family for their gifts...you are all so precious to me!

Secondly, my next worry with the class was finding enough births to attend. I will need to attend 2 births in order to be certified. My best friend Crystal is due in June, so I knew I would be able to use her birth as one, but I had no idea how to find a second birth. I was thinking I could call a midwife I knew or contact the Crisis Pregnancy Center and see if they had a mother whom I could attend, but yet again, God provided for me! I was on Facebook the other day, reading through some of my friends' pages, and realized I had a friend from highschool who is due in a few months. I had not even thought about her! I knew she was pregnant, but didn't realize she was as far along as she was. She and I got to talking, and I explained about my doula class and the certification process, and asked her and her husband to do some research online and see if they would like a doula to attend their birth. She just got back with me recently to say that, as long as the hospital had no policy against her having a doula present, they would be happy to have me come and use their birth to help me get certified!

I am just walking on air!

I've also been asked to speak at our local ICAN meeting on Saturday about the role of a doula. I'm excited about that as well, firstly because I think VBAC moms are probably one of the groups who most need an extra support person at their birth, and also because I think it can help get my name out to drum up clients.

Please pray that all goes well with this whole process! I'm also concerned about how attending births will affect my teaching schedule as well as my babysitting schedule. I had already been thinking that in another year or so I would need to stop keeping children in my home on a regular basis so that I can focus more on homeschooling (and also because I will *hopefully* be pregnant or have a new baby within the year). But God has provided in so many ways so far that I really feel like He is ordaining me to be a doula, so I'm sure He will work all of that stuff out in due time.