Midwifery Today, Issue 149, Spring 2024
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Midwifery by definition is about being “with,” which leaves us with an open-ended commitment of time, energy, and resources. Midwives as professionals regularly discuss the stressors of the job: the intensity, the emotions, the processing, the feeling of constant learning, questioning, and educating oneself and others while also performing a thousand other roles, including administrator, bookkeeper, phlebotomist, and consultant. 

I wanted to produce this issue on the strength of midwifery, which celebrates these challenges and how midwives meet them. The lows, the highs, the different needs of each and, at the same time, how we are never the same midwife because each birth changes us. For some, these are subtle changes—such as an acknowledgement that we need to do less or more. For others the changes are huge—recognizing that we need to know more, have a broader scope of thinking, or learn a new skill. 

Let’s acknowledge that this job is difficult while being miraculous, and that it is hard to walk the clinical, social, and political barriers while standing up for ourselves as autonomous and amazing individuals who refuse to give up on this most intimate and real profession.