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Careers for Those Who Love Kids

pic-4_APUS-kidsatworkBy Sarah Daren

If you like working with children, especially babies, then there are several careers out there that you might find fulfilling. When you have an opportunity to work in a field that pays you well while you get to do what you love, you should not pass up the opportunity.

Here are five careers involving babies that you can pursue. Each of them gives you a chance to do more than just accompany these new beginners in life. They let you have a profound impact in the quality of a person’s life when they are just starting out in the world.

Sonography

If you love babies, you will like a career that encounters them at the very beginning of life. Sonographers have the honor and privilege of helping parents see their children before they are even born. They use ultrasound technology to see beneath the surface of the human skin.

Sonography is a large field with many applications. If you want to focus on children in your career, you must study to be an obstetric sonographer. You can do much more than simply provide pictures for parents. This is very serious job because your work may also help reveal problems with the pregnancy or with the fetus. This opportunity to be so elemental in preserving the health of the child is another reward of being a sonographer.

Obstetrician

Another way to meet children at the very beginning is though obstetrics. An obstetrician is the primary caregiver for a woman during her pregnancy and especially at the moment of labor. This is the person who actually delivers the baby.

An obstetrician is a medical doctor and a physician. In order to acquire this job, you must attend medical school. Your career will involve many steps and tasks besides helping babies be born into the world. Your interaction with patients will also largely end at birth or shortly thereafter, when the mother returns to the care of a gynecologist and the baby enters the care of a pediatrician.

Pediatrician

If you are interested in taking over at the next stage of a child’s life, then the work of a pediatrician may interest you. Your work with children as a pediatrician will involve using professional skills to evaluate and diagnose illnesses as well as general well-being and development.

As a pediatrician, you will have the opportunity to share many joys with parents and their babies as the latter develop and grow. You will also have the opportunity to save lives and preserve the health of babies. As a physician, you will be able to detect and treat illnesses that could have long-lasting effects on children.

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Midwife

There are a number of people outside the usual array of doctors, nurses and other medical professionals who deal with babies on a regular basis. If you prefer one of these alternative routes to working with children, then become a midwife or a doula. Midwives are competent to help women deliver children on their own in most cases. A doula is a licensed birth assistant who accompanies a woman through pregnancy and birth while she is under the care of a physician.

Nurse

As a nurse, you have many ways that you could become involved in the lives of children. In their regular work, nurses work with people of all ages, including babies. Obstetric nurses and midwife nurses specialize in working with babies full-time.

There are other ways to become involved in careers that work with babies. No matter what your choice is, you will be required to educate yourself and acquire the proper licenses in order to be trusted with children.

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This article was originally published at CareerAlley.

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