Photo by leah hetteberg
“Hey, sir, can you help me with my birth bag? This one here. I’ve got to deliver a baby. Yes, down these steps. Thank you so much.” I beseech a guy who is walking down the street as I drop my Volvo in front of my client’s home, after speeding the wrong way down her one-way street. Read more…. Healing Birth
Photo by Finn Mund
“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.
Photo by Jenna Norman
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.
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.
Read more…. The Birth of a Baby and a Midwife in the San Luis Valley
