Being a midwife can be challenging, and it requires many skills. One of the skills I have had to hone as a midwife is juggling....

Being a midwife means being an expert in calendar juggling.  Scheduled commitments and activities may get canceled at the very last minute, or rearranged a few times depending on when babies decide to come.  Being a midwife means being dependable for clients, occasionally at the expense of your friends and family.  Sometimes you have to put the needs and desires of your family second. Yay for flexible families and friends who understand this and support the midwife wholeheartedly!

Sometimes being a midwife means juggling vehicles.  In my life, we have an older car which is fun to drive but isn't the car you want to drive for longer distances.  If the hubby needs to travel, we have a discussion about where my clients are located to decide which car he's taking.  Sometimes he may come and switch out cars while I'm at a birth.  

Being a midwife means you may juggle your own needs so you can support a client in labor.  I've been at many births where my needs for sleep, eating or drinking were shifted or delayed so I could be available to support a client in labor.

Being a midwife means trying to juggle the expectations you have of yourself, the expectations your clients have, and expectations others who are invited into the birth may have. Trying to juggle expectations means I am forever second guessing myself. I always wonder if I have missed something, if I am understanding what I can see, feel and observe correctly.  I am not perfect and know I will make mistakes, but I keep chasing after perfection. 

Don't misunderstand me, I am not complaining. I chose to be a midwife. I have impressed myself at times with the juggling that is part of midwifery.  Maybe one day I'll even learn to juggle balls or fruit!

When I was considering becoming a midwife, there was more than one path I could take.  As a doula, I had attended births where hands on skills were vital to a safe birth so I wanted to learn and feel proficient in those skills. I also knew I needed to have a much wider knowledge base to feel comfortable attending births.  I had completed all the courses required to start nursing clinicals when I attended Kansas State University, and I had worked as a Certified Nurse's Aide so I had some basic health care skills and knowledge.  That was a head start in being a midwife but it wasn't enough.  I considered going back to college to become a Certified Nurse Midwife.  That did not appeal to me at all.  First, I had (and still have) serious reservations about having to comply with hospital and insurance constraints when serving women and thier babies during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.  Second, I had no desire to spend years of my life attending college when I could be learning and working with women right away.  Third, I wanted to focus more on hands on practice and experience to compliment the abstract knowledge I would need to serve women well.

Apprenticing to become a Certified Professional Midwife was the right path for me. I loved that I could immediately begin developing and honing skills while learning the abstract knowledge I needed to understand pregnancy, birth and postpartum. Working in a home birth practice let me see the beauty and wisdom of natural birth.  It also gave me the experience to become familiar with normal pregnancy, birth and postpartum which makes me better able to recognize when things fall outside of normal.  My apprenticeship let me experience the true continuity of midwifery care, in real world practice, which semesters and a standardized curriculum cannot replicate. My apprenticeship was one of the most challenging and fulfilling things I have ever done. My apprenticeship didn't just help me become a midwife, it helped me grow as a person.  That personal growth has served me well as a midwife.

Since Kansas does not have any credentialing for direct entry midwives, there is no test or assessment of skills to determine competency at the state level. I wanted something that showed I had met a baseline standard for midwifery care.  I wanted my clients to know that I had taken on the responsibility to learn the skills and knowledge needed to be a midwife and that I had shown competence in them. I use the knowledge and skills I learned every time I serve a client and I still hear my preceptor's voice as I use those skills.  I continue to learn and refine my current skills as well as add new skills. I am proud to have earned the national credential of CPM and I am proud to serve my clients within the framework of client centered, evidence based care that aligns with the Midwives Model of Care.
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As a doula, I saw a big disconnect between the current evidence and recommendations and the care that was actually given.  I had a client who wanted delayed cord clamping.  The American Academy of Pediatrics and World Health Organization were recommending it.  My client asked her doctor to delay cord clamping and he refused, stating it would harm the baby by giving it too much blood. That incident had me wondering what the doctor was doing, if anything, to stay current on evidence based care.  I watched as mothers were not allowed to eat even though the evidence did not support that.  I witnessed parents being coerced into making decisions to appease medical providers and I witnessed medical providers giving an "informed consent" talk that did not fully cover all the risks of whatever the provider was asking the parents to consent to.

What finally tipped me into a full on drive to become a midwife was my sister's birth.  She lived in an upscale suburb of Detroit.  She was an athlete who had a very healthy, normal pregnancy. During her labor, she and her doctor agreed that a cesearan section was the best way for baby to be born.  I was present when the doctor discussed the risks of cesearan section.  She did not tell my sister she was at a higher risk of a postpartum hemorrhage or discuss risks a c-section may pose for future pregnancies.  Ten days after her baby's birth, my sister experienced a postpartum hemorrhage.  She nearly died sitting in the hospital emergency room waiting to get adequate care.  She was asked what she did to cause the hemorrhage in way that left her feeling she was somehow to blame.  After emergency surgery, she was sent to the ICU where the medical providers searched Google in her room to tell her she should dump her breast milk for the next 24 hours.  Had they contacted the hospital's lactation consultant, they would have gotten the correct information that the breast milk was fine for baby.  She was not allowed to see her baby, hold her baby or nurse her baby until she left the ICU 3 days later.  She was traumatized by how she was treated.

That was when I decided that no woman should ever have to experience the medical care my sister did. No woman should have to sit bleeding out in an emergency room, waiting for care.  No woman should be made to feel that they somehow intentionally caused a hemorrhage.  No woman should watch a medical provider search Google for the wrong answer.  No woman and baby should be seperated after birth. The fastest way to start the change to compassionate, respectful, evidence based care women need and are entitled to is to beome the one providing the care.  That is why I am a midwife.