Membership Content

Imagine that you are a young woman, poor and pregnant. Let’s say your name is Myrna. Your home is located in a remote, rural area of an island that is recovering from disaster. You have had no prenatal care because it’s too far to walk and even if it was nearby, you could not afford the cost.

 Read more…. Buntis Day Party: A Mercy In Action Imaginative Prenatal Model in the Philippines

met Midwife Penninah Mukhebi at the FreMo Birth Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, where I was offering volunteer midwifery for the month of May 2023. I traveled there by myself and was welcomed with open arms and kindness by the FreMo staff, including their director Moffat Osoro, a kind, well-spoken Kenyan man.

 Read more…. Volunteering in Kenya, Friendship with Midwife Penninah, and African Naming Traditions

Tricks of the Trade – Issue 147 | Traditional Use of a Rebozo – Prodromal Labor – On Breech Babies – Natural Remedies

 Read more…. Tricks of the Trade – Issue 147

Women in Australia ask each other “Who are you going to for Prenatal Scare?” Sadly, that could be said in North America, too. Stressed practitioners unloading their personal fears on pregnant women is a common scenario all over the world.

 Read more…. Prenatal Care or Prenatal Scare?

Hampi Warmi Initiative (Peru project) includes the offering of the “Wachakuy: Sacred Birth Way” to international birthworkers and aspiring midwives, doulas, and birthkeepers to experience a unique entrance to the Andean ancestral teachings around birth, midwifery, and BirthGuardianship around pregnancy, the sacred Initiation of birth and the postpartum.

 Read more…. Wachakuy Birth Program

Across the animal world, we observe shared practices of welcoming and nurturing the young (Narvaez and Bradshaw 2023). Sometimes the offspring is encased in a shell, sometimes in the uterus, but in every case the offspring is held in a body of love—first from mother, then from the kind attention of others who move in to care and guide the newborn—father, grandmother, sibling, midwife.

 Read more…. The Evolved Nest: What We Share with the Animal World

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that you can’t step in the same river twice. If he were alive today and had an understanding of midwifery education, he would probably say the same about Mercy In Action’s midwife training programs. I first wrote for Midwifery Today 32 years ago, an article titled Midwifery Education: A Global Perspective (Midwifery Today Issue 20, 1991.)

 Read more…. Mercy In Action—Still Training Global Midwives After All These Years!

“Ha Estado su nino activo?” I ask the Mexican mother as I adjust a blood pressure cuff around her upper arm. I look to see if she understands me. I check a box that her kick counts are good when she answers “Si,” or “A veces.” I wish I could communicate what I mean more specifically, but I’m not able to do that yet.

 Read more…. The Modern Hen Party

We hope that this new department, which replaces “Journal Abstracts,” will assist you in offering the best midwifery care to the women you serve.

 Read more…. Evidence-Based Midwifery

I have always had a deep fascination for childbirth. When my mother was pregnant with my second-to-last sibling, I attended her midwifery appointments and read all of her birth books. She taped together the pages that she deemed inappropriate for an eight-year-old, which, naturally, I untaped, read, and retaped carefully. None of my other siblings saw what I did in childbirth and pregnancy, but I was captivated by it.

 Read more…. It Is a Privilege to Simply Be Here

In 2009, when cleaning out old files, I found a handwritten account of the following events that had been carefully saved and totally forgotten for 25 years. I had not forgotten the story, but I had lost track of the fact that I had written about it shortly after it happened. I was living in a very rural isolated area of Costa Rica in the community of Monteverde, a place that I had lived in several times during my young adulthood, first when I was just 18 years old. My experience there had strongly informed and inspired my desire to become a midwife. At the time of this birth I was waiting to hear if I would be admitted to the Frontier Nursing Service Midwifery class of 1985. I was a registered nurse with lots of experience working with pregnant women but I had never been the primary attendant at a homebirth.

 Read more…. The Birth of a Baby and a Midwife in the San Luis Valley