Midwife of the Month

As a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a midwife. In middle school I read a novel called “Jacob, have I loved.” Have you read this wonderful story? I was enthralled.  Later, in high school I learned one of my dorm parents birthed her daughters at home with a midwife. I couldn’t believe helping women have babies was a job. I bought Elizabeth Davis’s “Heart and Hands” and poured over the pencil drawings. I left rural Maine for Philadelphia to study nursing and midwifery and though I loved Penn, I couldn’t wait to get back home. Looking back it’s clear to me that Midwifery was less of a career choice than a realization of who I am.

I’ve been practicing for 16 years. I’ve worked in big hospitals, little hospitals, birth centers and at home. I am as enthusiastic about the future of midwifery now as I was the day I started my first clinical rotation. Exciting things are happening in the worlds of midwifery and childbirth! I find the acknowledgment from mainstream medicine that there is value in physiologic birth and that old paradigms were flawed, deeply satisfying. It’s clear that the exponential rise in the cost of health care is unsustainable as well as unnecessary. Midwives are experts in providing care that is high quality and high value. The challenges are great but we are well positioned to be part of the solution rather than the problem. 

And...I’m interested in integrating more body work and healing through plants/food/herbs into my practice.