Me, The Midwife
Beautiful Image Courtesy of Miracle Mountain ImagesToday is Saturday and I got to hang out with my oldest daughter, Starla and her son Kailyb. K was born on my birthday in my bed at home with me as the primary midwife.
Starla was born in the hospital. As she was my first child and a gift (not planned), I knew very little, in fact nothing about being pregnant. She was born after five hours of intense labor with no complications. But I cried intensely after she was born and the days after. Something just felt "wrong" about the whole thing.
I was in my radical feminist days so decided to be an agent of change and become a midwife. I went to school to be a nurse, then in my second year met the local lay midwives. They worked together in a cooperative fashion and had a number of apprentices. As I was so committed to birthing and wanted to devote all my time to it, they asked me to come on full time. When I looked at the politics of the day, I realised that I would never be able to practice homebirth as a Nurse-Midwife as it was impossible to find a doctor for backup. If you do homebirths without that in place, you can get your license revoked, possibly be arrested. I decided that to continue that path would be a waste of time, so I took quit school and them up on their offer.
I got to attend tons of births, learned lots, and when they stopped practicing eventually practiced as a primary. I loved the births, loved being with families in this time of major transitions. I miss that.
It takes a very special sort of person to maintain that lifestyle of constantly being on call, and never fully sleeping through a night, never being assured of a holiday or that I would be able to attend my child's birthday party. I look at women who were practicing when I was and who are still, twenty five years later, catching babies. They've assisted thousands of babies and families and quite frankly, that always blows me away. I admire them.
I came into birthing angry at medical intervention of birth. It still upsets me, but I understand why they doctors intervene. It's because they want to make sure in the every way they know how to try to make it safe. And while I don't agree with their methods, I completely understand their intent. Birth, as life, is an unpredictable event. It never follows a text book, you can never know where it will go. While so much can be avoided by not intervening, that line of then to do so and when not to takes tremendous Trust. And when you are responsible for a life, two lives, Trust can be quite daunting. I understand them now.
After six years of practicing it came to me that if something was to happen to either a baby or the mother I would feel responsible, no matter what I had done "right." It got quite scary to realise that I was a minor player in a family's Karma. And that by placing myself there in the middle of it, I was putting my children and family in jeopardy. I burned out.
But it's ever so amazing and is such an honor to see babies I helped be born now taller than me and having babies of their own. Now that's cool.
Starla was born in the hospital. As she was my first child and a gift (not planned), I knew very little, in fact nothing about being pregnant. She was born after five hours of intense labor with no complications. But I cried intensely after she was born and the days after. Something just felt "wrong" about the whole thing.
I was in my radical feminist days so decided to be an agent of change and become a midwife. I went to school to be a nurse, then in my second year met the local lay midwives. They worked together in a cooperative fashion and had a number of apprentices. As I was so committed to birthing and wanted to devote all my time to it, they asked me to come on full time. When I looked at the politics of the day, I realised that I would never be able to practice homebirth as a Nurse-Midwife as it was impossible to find a doctor for backup. If you do homebirths without that in place, you can get your license revoked, possibly be arrested. I decided that to continue that path would be a waste of time, so I took quit school and them up on their offer.
I got to attend tons of births, learned lots, and when they stopped practicing eventually practiced as a primary. I loved the births, loved being with families in this time of major transitions. I miss that.
It takes a very special sort of person to maintain that lifestyle of constantly being on call, and never fully sleeping through a night, never being assured of a holiday or that I would be able to attend my child's birthday party. I look at women who were practicing when I was and who are still, twenty five years later, catching babies. They've assisted thousands of babies and families and quite frankly, that always blows me away. I admire them.
I came into birthing angry at medical intervention of birth. It still upsets me, but I understand why they doctors intervene. It's because they want to make sure in the every way they know how to try to make it safe. And while I don't agree with their methods, I completely understand their intent. Birth, as life, is an unpredictable event. It never follows a text book, you can never know where it will go. While so much can be avoided by not intervening, that line of then to do so and when not to takes tremendous Trust. And when you are responsible for a life, two lives, Trust can be quite daunting. I understand them now.
After six years of practicing it came to me that if something was to happen to either a baby or the mother I would feel responsible, no matter what I had done "right." It got quite scary to realise that I was a minor player in a family's Karma. And that by placing myself there in the middle of it, I was putting my children and family in jeopardy. I burned out.
But it's ever so amazing and is such an honor to see babies I helped be born now taller than me and having babies of their own. Now that's cool.
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