When I first became involved in midwifery it was rather unwittingly. I mean I never woke up one day and said “Oh my! I am called to be a midwife”. As a matter of fact I was barely aware that the word existed and though aware, simply considered it some arcaic term from a dusty forgotten past. I had never heard the word doula. I was one, I simply didn’t know there was a word or formal training available for this driving passion I had to support laboring women.
I had a dear friend who was pregnant with her third (and final) child who came to me and asked if I would help her research having her last baby vaginally though I didn’t know that such a thing was possible either. Together we trekked down to the library only to be told that there were no books in the library on the subject (really?) but the librarian handed me a card that simply read “Birth Library” open Tuesdays from 1 to 5 and then the address. It was 1:30 on a Tuesday afternoon. Backtracking to the car and made our way through town to a house in a nice neighborhood. A slim, pleasant woman who welcomed us in and asked a few questions about exactly what we were looking for greeted us at the door. I explained what my friend was desiring and the woman said “Oh she is trying for a VBAC” , and at my blank questioning look explained what the acronym meant (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean). And then she asked how long I had been a “Doula”. I graced her with yet another clueless look. She said “Oh you may not know it, but you are a doula”. She then led me to an entire section of her lending library that contained books on labor support, and a bit further and handed me two more books. One was called “Spiritual Midwifery” and the other was called “Silent Knife”.
It was like pouring gasoline over me, and striking a match. I was forever changed on that day. I continued to attend births of friends at the hospital. Many times I returned to visit the Birth Library. Once I asked her how I could become a midwife, and she said well for starters, you had to be ready when an opening came with one of the local midwives. Two weeks later she called and said that she had lost her apprentice and was I still interested. Uhhhh…… Yeah! And so began the most wonderful, amazing, miracle filled time I had ever known. This was nothing like hospital births! Women wandered around their houses. Went outside for walks, sat in their gardens, stood in their showers. But not one, ever climbed in their beds! Some gave birth on their bed, on the floor, leaning on their bed, one stayed in the living room and then calmly spread out a plastic sheet in the middle of the floor, laid out a couple of towels and got down on all fours and quietly pushed out her baby. My calm, unflappable midwife simple followed them around and accommodated whatever position they wanted to arrange themselves in. I never once heard her tell anyone to “Hold your breathe and PUSH while I count to 10”. Each of those babies slipped out into the waiting hands of my preceptor even without all the crazy pushing.
It was a fantastic time of change for me and has forever changed who I am. I felt the call to midwifery in those days of holding women’s faces in my hands, and telling them that they could do it. The vision of what I was to become was born in me amongst the birth fluids, the slick vernix, the earthy, rich smells.
Through some difficult circumstances I came to a point where I had to postpone my training. That postponement lasted more than 10 years and the dream almost died. But a good friend, and a website search fanned the flame once again, and I became a student of Aviva Institute a couple of years ago.
The journey is changing me. Perhaps some will say that some of the changes are not good, but that is not so. There was much in me waiting to be woken up and the path to becoming a midwife has been the catalyst. I have been a bit afraid to add the second installment here because there is so many huge things within me that it makes me feel exposed. My old fears of rejection raise their ugly heads. So here in this history is my small tentative step to continue this account. There will be so much more to come and so much will have nothing to do with the subject of midwifery or birth itself. As I said, it is about the journey of becoming a midwife.
The small steps make the journey,
Margie
