Preface

My husband and I were living in Pennsylvania in the mid-to-late 1970s when I first helped Amish women give birth in their homes, often by lamplight. Most of the births were uncomplicated. However, I soon realized I didn’t have the training, knowledge, or experience to help as much as I wanted when births didn’t go as planned.

I did discover, though, that I had the temperament, patience, compassion, curiosity to learn, and not just the desire but a passion to be a part of what I still consider to be the most momentous events on earth. In the following years I became a licensed midwife, a childbirth educator, a lactation (breastfeeding) consultant/educator, then a birth doula. Most importantly, I became a mother of five, including twins, and eventually a grandmother.

My own birth journey began when, after years of infertility testing, I became joyfully pregnant. Though there were several books on the market in 1980 about raising children, there wasn’t much about giving birth. When I discovered the first edition of Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin, I devoured it. I can do this, I thought. And I did, giving birth to my almost-ten-pound Abraham without drugs, in a little hospital birthing room before the doctor even arrived. We went home six hours later.

I wanted to do the same thing when I became pregnant again. We knew it was twins before the doctor did. I scheduled my own ultrasound to convince him. Though protocols were beginning to change, the only way I could deliver them in Minnesota in 1982 was in an operating room after being prepped for surgery. They said they would let me try to have a natural birth—but it terrified them. So I called Ina May Gaskin for advice and she invited me to The Farm Midwifery Center in Summertown, Tennessee. I moved to Tennessee that autumn and had a beautiful experience birthing two healthy babies. One weighed seven pounds, fifteen ounces; the other was seven pounds, seven ounces. Their births were filmed (See Twin Vertex Birth in Resources) and the video has been used as a teaching tool for many years.

 

Stephanie with her twins.

After our twins we had two more babies, three years apart. They were both unassisted home births. Though I had planned to have a midwife both times, they didn’t make it in time because though I thought I had planned well, I forgot to calculate how long it would take the midwives to reach our small log home in rural Wisconsin.

By the time we had five children I had taken a few courses and began to seriously think about become a licensed midwife. It all came together when I received a Bush Leadership Fellowship in 1989, which enabled me to complete an internship in midwifery at a freestanding birthing clinic in El Paso, Texas, which also served the neighboring city of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. It allowed me to complete the final requirements needed to take the state midwifery boards that same year. I received my midwifery license in 1989.

Fast forward to 2010. We had just returned to Minnesota after living in England for several years. Our children were grown and on their own. I was in my fifties and knew that I did not want to work in a hospital or clinic as a midwife where I would be assigned two, three, or more families per shift and would have to leave them at the end of my shift. I also did not want to take my midwifery board examinations all over again, which could take up to two years of preparation. I wasn’t sure it would be worth all the work; besides, I was not too keen to learn all the new electronic charting and the rocket science monitoring systems now in place since I left.

I looked up my old mentor from long ago and we put together a plan to bring some of my credentials current by taking a few continuing education courses. Several months later I was ready to look for work teaching childbirth education classes and as a lactation consultant.

One day I was taking some Somali women on a tour of a free-standing birthing center to show them some of their options in this country. The director asked for my phone number should they need a teacher in the future. A month later, on the eve of the Fourth of July, with every room in the birthing center full, I received a call, begging me to come in as an extra pair of hands to help them out.

I was soon hired as a childbirth education teacher, lactation educator and consultant, and birth assistant, working under one of the other midwives. It was great fun and an honor to be back in birth work. During my year there I also became certified as a postpartum doula and was able to help couples at home, too, after their births. Soon I became a birth doula, which allows me to accompany a woman to the hospital when her labor begins and stay with her for the whole birth. I don’t have to leave at shift change. I don’t have to be concerned about the paperwork or if the machines are working properly. I don’t have to leave to be with another family.

Being a doula is my dream job. In the last few years I have helped moms of every size, shape, color, almost every religion under the sun, first-time moms, fourth-time moms, moms who wanted no drugs, at least one who wanted an epidural in her eighth month of pregnancy, uncomplicated vaginal births, C-sections, multiples, breech—almost every scenario you can imagine. Two decades ago I lost count after helping with my two-hundredth baby. I am still honored and humbled when I can witness each magnificent, mystifying miracle of birth.

 

 

“Natural childbirth has evolved to suit the species, and if mankind chooses to ignore her advice and interfere with her workings we must not complain about the consequences. We have only ourselves to blame.”

~Margaret Jowitt