Photo by Kelly Sikkema

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.