She's back!

I've lost my voice -- my blogging voice -- I've been away so long. Zoinks.

As I work to find it, let me offer a little explanation for where I've been (and where I may well run off to again). It's several places, really:

1. Facebook. Nuff said.
2. New job
3. Family life
4. More Facebook (Scramble will be the death of me)
5. Lack of inspiration

If I can reconstruct the past year or so correctly, the end of my blogging was brought about by wanting to keep the focus of this blog on birth, but not having much to say about birth.

Nothing bad has happened, I wasn't distracted by, say, a personal health crisis, or marital troubles. Thankfully.

But I took a new job in October, 2008 and did not take on any doula clients for the first year I was there. It's a good job, for me and my family. I did not want to jeopardize it by running off to the hospital with little or no notice. "You were where? With whom? Why?" It can be hard to explain a doula's life to people.

At the same time, I became, inexplicably, less interested in birth topics. The fodder of this blog has been as much my reflections on our birth culture as actual births I attended. In theory I could keep thinking and writing about birth even if I wasn't observing it.

But my physical leave from birth coincided with (or caused, or perhaps was caused by) a general apathy toward the whole topic. I took "The Farmer and the Obstetrician" off my To Read list. I recycled my DONA magazines the day they arrived.

I can't say why I replied to an inquiry last July from a pregnant woman due in October. Before I knew it, I had a client. Then another -- expecting twins in December. Then a friend asked me to be her doula for her November birth. I had 3 clients and still wasn't sure how I felt about my relationship to birth work.

I plan to write about these births. They each, as always, taught me something. They each have larger take-away lessons. I am planning to be the doula for two women due this spring. Both are repeat clients.

At the same time, I have let my DONA membership and certification lapse. I haven't written here -- about birth at least -- in over a year.

Could it be that I'm moving into a different life phase, one that is enough removed from my own pregnancies and births that I no longer have the same emotional response to reproduction? Is birth "just" an interest -- like knitting, Wilco or professional hockey -- that captured me completely for a period of time and left me burned out? Maybe I'm just flaky.

Time will tell.

I wrote today. I have several things I hope to post about soon.