Joining Hands

A little something in the works...

My steps into healing and medicine began when I was about 6 years old and had enough awareness to see the work my grandfather did. I was fascinated by his instruments, mostly by the stool that I knew he used to slide from a desk to a patient. I was obsessed. When my grandfather passed away, I was in the seventh grade. I hung up the phone after speaking with my daddy about grandpa and I said, “I will become a doctor.” My path to midwifery wasn’t all that straightforward, however. I began the journey out of high school to be a pre-med major. However, a significant family event moved me to head down a path of self-discovery. I quit medicine and explored education, wilderness pursuits, and the world of shamanism, yoga, energy-work, and integrative healing medicines. I had silenced crucial ingredients in my life from age 10 to 19: magic, earth wisdom, integrity, and a sense of wonder. My grades began to reflect that my desire to go to medical school was waning and my desire to learn to be a leader, visionary and educator was surfacing. I rose to the occasion. After 6 years of this adventure, the yearning returned. These six years laid the foundation for a huge leap I would take in the coming years. When I asked, I listened and heard the calling to empower and transform the lives of women and families through healthcare and medicine. But wait...I thought I was going to be a healer and the kind of healer that lives out in the woods with all her spirits and woody treatments. Instead, I saw myself in both hospitals and the wilderness. I saw myself in homes and clinics. I saw myself surrounded by infants and children. I saw all these visions and I continued to shove them to the very back of my brain where they would lay dormant until I was ready to awaken. Somehow, the adventures of my life from 1996 to 2003 mashed together and created what I am becoming today. In 2003, I applied to midwifery school. Shortly before the program was to begin, my best friend died in a climbing accident. I was asked to conduct and hold the space of the memorial service. During this moment, as snakes slid into our circle and osprey flew in circles above I learned about the true meaning of the word “Midwife.”

Midwife, phonetically, means “with woman.” It was an expert in education who reminded me that we can be more than just a midwife to the parturient woman. He reminded me to be a midwife to my students, a midwife to the dying and mourning, and most important a midwife to myself. I am one of the fortunate women and men who have studied Midwifery and have become licensed as a Midwife. This work is extraordinary. It is a profession, in the United States, that has been pushed to the bottom of the totem pole even though we fly to tall heights for our patients. It is a profession that compromises relationships, social adventures, birthday parties and sometimes love-making because the phone rings and you hear your client is having contractions 2 to 3 minutes apart and feeling lots of pressure. Commonly, you then have to get your assistants and students lined up, all while brushing your teeth and getting ready for the “day.” As one friend said, “You just miss out on so many things.” I don’t see my job that way. I see it as the opportunity to leave the mundane rituals of our human existence to move along side with a woman in labor; and when the activity of labor presents I am there to make sure everything is birthed safely and as intuitively as the agreement made between mother and baby before the birth begins. And when that agreement is meant to draw in the attendant and challenge them, I am there with all my education and training to act as a health care professional and make sure both mom and baby are “born” safely.

I chose the profession of midwifery over obstetrics because it matched my beliefs in women, birth and health care. I see pregnancy and birth as an opportunity to grow and learn, rather than an illness and condition. I am trained and educated to recognize and work with complications, however the mother is not a complication to me nor is the baby inside her womb until she presents with a complication and needs medical attention. I see pregnancy as a magical time. At birth is when we become the gatekeepers, whether you wear the acronym of CPM, CNM, MD, Ob/Gyn. I still see birth as a magical event. In this country, where 1 in every 5,600 mothers giving birth unfortunately dies-we the gatekeepers are here to change that issue and see to these numbers improving. It is our job people, our job to make this number fewer and fewer each MINUTE. Each minute.

A new chapter began today, started gestating a couple months ago. As I slowly grow into this new chapter in Midwifery and Maternal/Child Health I will do my best to be a better writer. To keep you informed. However, if you are a Midwife, a Doctor, or a Momma carrying her child inside or in her arms, or a poppa loving your family-do your best today to find your strongest vision, your strongest point in which to take care of the women that surround you, the women that make community, the women that we need to hold in life. Find it, write it here, write is somewhere else. Just make sure it matters to you, to your highest self and create what is yours. Again, CREATE it with all your heart.