I want to start up a midwifery service. Offering care and experience

[MidwifeJulie]

As a second life and real life midwife. I would like to shape myself and sell a service as a midwife to the new families in Linden. Am I daft to think this would be nice/ useful? And how do I go about it

[Rolig Loon]

There are no "rules" or professional standards in SL, so you are what you claim to be.  That can be a disadvantage if you are a professional and want to build credibility and stand out from the non-professionals, but it's also an invitation for you to help set a standard.  There are in-world counseling services for many women's issues, including pregnancy and childbirth.  You ought to be able to find some with a simple search, or you can get a head start by visiting HealthInfo Island and perusing the resources that they have.  As is the case for most small busineses in SL, you will need to invent your own as you go along, but contacts that you make during this background phase will make it easier to plan.

As an afterthought .... You may want to distinguish between midwifery and RL resource services on the one hand and in-world role-play pregnancy/child care on the other hand.  The two obviously overlap, but I think you will find that there's a difference in  clientele between young RL couples and SL role-players.

[Cinnamon Lohner]

Best way to start is to move your post over to a forum where you can have an interactive discussion.  This Answers board forum is not useful for that.  Probably the General Discussions Forum is a good place.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/bd-p/GeneralDiscussionForum

--Cinn

[Marigold Devin]

Welcome to Second Life and Second Life Answers, MidwifeJulie

You're not daft at all to think it would be nice/useful to offer the services of a midwife, however you do need to do some research in world, for there are various services on offer to those who wish to roleplay pregnancy and birth, for many and varied reasons.

I would suggest you search inworld using such keywords as "midwife", "pregnancy", "birth", etc., see what comes up already, and have a teleport around the grid.  Maybe you could set yourself up as a district midwife, complete with bicycle on a 1950s-themed sim (or start this up yourself if it doesn't already exist inworld).

What I'm saying is, anything you would want to be is absolutely possible (and certainly not daft) in Second Life.

Good luck to you.

[NaiadNightfire]

There are no daft ideas in SL, just some ideas that work, and others that don't (aka some of my more EPIC FAILS lol).

I think the trick will be not so much can it work, more how to make it work well.

Lots of research, lots of teleporting etc. One good thing is that I feel you could do this with very little financial outlay, so at the worst you may waste a bit of time, whereas the best case scenario is that you will help people, and make thier experiences even better, so you go for it me thinks

[Ariel Vuissent]

It's certainly something many people can use. A lot of people in SL choose to start families, and need doctors/midwives to help them. Educate yourself with the different pregnancy HUD's out there, for one. There are several, and being able to offer assistance with many, if not all, of them would give you a leg up. You may also want to educate yourself about the different prim babies available, as you may have clients ask you about them.

Overall just do your research, figure out your own rp limits and what kind of business you want to run, and go from there.