How I got where I am and where I plan to go from here.

Posted by Le

I also have a tendency to go on for far too long when explaining why I want to be a midwife, how I got to where I am and where I am headed from here so I will try to give the summary of the condensed version.

I first learned about birth doulas in 2001 and thought it sounded interesting. I happened to have time available between quitting work and starting college so I took the doula training course.

Spring break of my senior year I went to visit my Grandma in rural Idaho and we stayed the night at her friend's house - her friend happens to be a midwife. I mentioned to my mom that I thought it would be an interesting job and less than 3 days later I got a call from my Grandmother saying the midwife's assistant was getting married and I could be the new assistant if I wanted to be. Three months after I graduated I moved to the middle of nowhere Idaho and began working as a midwifery assistant. I realize now that it is usually much harder to find a midwife to work with but at the time I had no clue how blessed I was especially since I hadn't even been looking.



The midwifery practice I worked with wasn't very busy but I was able to attend over 20 births and learned many skills in the time I spent there. For mainly financial reasons I left after two years and figured I would just go back to having "real" full time jobs like I had before. I soon found out that I could never go back to my old life as being involved in birth had changed me. I spent the next two years being involved in different midwifery communities where I lived, looking into different midwifery schools, working as a doula, and trying to figure out what role I should fill in birthing.

A year ago March I attended a birth as an assistant and wound up being the only one there when the baby was born. A few months later I then began looking into midwifery school again, but more seriously this time and found out about the proposed merger between Bastyr & SMS. SMS had been my favorite school when I had looked before and I got my undergrad degree at Bastyr. So last July I began hurriedly trying to figure out how to take all the pre-reqs so I could apply for the 10-11 school year. My crazy year of working while taking online and hybrid classes is now almost over and I begin school at Bastyr again in September.

I am excited for the program but also nervous. The midwife I have worked with the most didn't use (or even carry) any meds and was very traditional. While I believe that the SMS/Bastyr program respects the birth process as natural it is much more medical that anything I have done before. I have some concerns about it causing me to become fearful or distrusting of birth. I hope that I will be able to hold onto what is good from what I have already learned and blend it with the new information.

I am excited to be able to share this process with others and to be able to read about other people are progressing on their journey.