Meeting with a Midwife

So, I drove my happy self to another birthing center just down the road from the one I used! The coincidence seems odd. The only two birthing centers I've heard of are smack dab in the same scary part of town, 2 min apart. Whatever.

This was quite an operation! This birthing center has something like 5 or 6 midwives on staff, and 3 apprentices. Whoa dang! I learned so much about the place. Also, I loved chatting with April, the woman who showed me around. Some of the other midwives I've talked to have treated me like I wasn't cool enough to join the club, so it was so very refreshing to spend some time with someone so excited about educating me about midwifery and their apprenticeship program. I think the CPM route is the one I will end up persuing. I just think the time you spend becoming qualified to be a nurse midwife is too valuable to be used in school. I really feel like 8 years of being there with the birthing moms is so much more valuable than being in school where most of the time you aren't touching anything resembling midwifery, mothers or babies. My academia mind is not pleased with my latest opinion. But I'm not set on one certain thing right now. I still have yet to hear from the nurse midwife I know about helping out with some births. The woman has been crazy crazy busy, so I'm not even a little offended. However, if she was less then serious then she will have to do more than avoid my calls. *crazy gleam in my eyes*

I wish I could better pin down how this meeting with April made me feel. The women in the practice were all very different, very caring. They really did like to hear what I had to say, kept asking me questions. I think the vast majority of them were Christian. April let me ask some very hard questions. I asked how she felt CPM's and CNM's compared and if CPM's were a less safe choice. I asked her about infant demise, something Husband is very worried about for me. I asked her about the lifestyle and she gave it to me pretty straight. I even felt comfortable explaining how I thought this might be like a calling for me, so I am being very fearful and slow about it. She really seemed to understand. All in all, it was a terrific experience. I feel much more connected? knowledgable? I certainly feel like I have a better feel of the pace of a midwives life. I've been reading some fantastic midwifery blogs, but sometimes they are just so politically charged, and I don't want to be involved with that so much. I just want to help women have a wonderful, safe, beautiful experience.

I think to sum up what I think of midwifery, I'ld have to rip off the phrase, "It's not the destination that matters, but the journey." I look at the journey of women who have labored in a hospital, and it just looks unnessecarily hard. It makes me want to throw them a party for managing to do it at all. I look at the journey of women who have birthed in birthing centers or at home, and they look like they've have a whole lot of fun. The truth for low risk, healthy women is that the destination is almost always the same, a happy healthy child, but what the mom goes through to get there differs greatly.