Gluing down the pieces

This may be the first blog post about the BEST (Breastfeeding Education and Support for Teenage mothers) project, but the wheels have been turning for many months to get to this point. Since I first heard of this project's concept last July, there have been many meetings, emails and brainstorm sessions involving many helpful folks to get to where we are today.

Two weekends ago, Seton Home hosted a training session on breastfeeding management with 2 nursing students, ~15 medical students, and 5 Seton Home staff in attendance. This Thursday Miranda and I will hold the first BEST support group meeting with real live teenage moms and teenage moms to be. The wheels are definitely turning.

And while all of this action is definitely exciting, it is also nervewracking. See, I've never much liked "gluing down the pieces". I love planning projects and micromanaging every angle, but I cringe at the idea of letting the plan come to fruition. Because once things are "glued down" there is no going back.

I can remember having this problems as far back as elementary school, when I was assigned to research culture and art from the 1920's and make a poster of my findings. Researching was the easy part; I found several pictures in books, made copies and cut them out. I wrote descriptions to go with each picture. But then... Oh I could not bring myself to glue the pieces to the poster board! I spent hours arranging and rearranging, adding construction paper as borders and then changing my mind. I suppose you could say I have *ahem* perfectionist tendencies.

So now that the BEST project is on a roll with months worth of momentum, I am having a lot of trouble. What if the meeting isn't perfect on Thursday? What if we don't reach all of the teens? What if the grants I am submitting don't receive funding? Shouldn't I spend just a little more time tweaking this or that to make sure everything is just right?

...




Ok, no more tweaking, it's time to glue down the pieces!