The perfect midwife

My idea of the perfect midwife is: someone who can be focused, calm, and fast to think of solutions. Someone who can facilitate growth while maintaining relationships that lead to sharing the same empowerment amongst the community as a whole. Someone who knows how to “pay it forward” and trusts that she can give willingly and know that she will receive what she needs in return. She is appreciated by the community and people trust her. He can be tough when she needs to protect herself or the people she is caring for, she can be brave when she has to do something hard, she can be quiet when it is time to witness and she can be available when she is needed for help. She is strong in her convictions but not afraid to learn from others. She is open to diversity in cultures and respects traditions and different belief systems. She honors her work as a midwife as a privilege and is gracious for the opportunity to help people who seek her. She knows when to say no to someone she cannot help. She balances her passion for service with her love of her family. She sets an example to the community of peaceful presence and responsible agency. She is happy to teach other women the arts that she possesses and knows that by enabling more people to practice, she ensures everyone a better life. She is ok with not living in luxury and appreciates the little things in life, she finds her riches in the relationships she builds and the people she calls friends. When things get difficult, she can calmly react and manage the situation and even if there is not a favorable outcome, she is confident and humble at the same time.

Birth Heaven Now!

I am so excited to be participating in this class with Stephanie Dawn. I received an email about how to sign up and instantly thought, "This is totally something I should be doing!" Stephanie has been warm and welcoming and has helped me considerably to be able to attend, despite my financial issues.

IN this class we are exploring and defining the old paradigm of birth as :
The Old Paradigm:

1. Does not honor women
2. Does not trust birth
3. Does not respect a woman’s body
4. Does not empower women to do right by themselves
5. Causes unnecessary fear around pregnancy and birth
6. Causes unnecessary power struggles with women
7. Unenlightened Birth Caregivers/”Medical Authority” who assume decision making on behalf of a woman.
8. Does not embody LIGHT and LOVE and PEACE and POWER WITH
9. Instead embodies FEAR, energizes POWER OVER, BODILY AND SPIRITUAL AND EMOTIONAL DISRESPECT and DISEMPOWERMENT


and the new paradigm:

1. Honors women
2. Trusts birth
3. Respects a woman’s body
4. Empowers women to listen to themselves; all aspects (emotional, spiritual, sensual, physical)
5. Birth caregivers and Birth Team energize and exemplify POWER WITH, which EMPOWERS, RESPECTS AND HONORS women ~ keeps playing field level.
6. Keeps choice and informed decision making with the woman
7. Enlightened and AWARE birth caregivers
8. Supports women to birth in LOVE, LIGHT, PEACE

This speaks to me in ways that I can not verbalize as well as Stephanie does. It was mentioned by one of the class participants that the new moms in our culture don't even realize that these 2 different worlds exist and that we need to be able to explain to them what they are up against and how they can achieve more than they ever imagined through birth. I worry about this all the time. How can I help bring awareness to someone who has not yet experienced the Hell or Heaven of birth. It is like leading the blind to figure out what color means. I fear that women may not take it seriously, may not understand the damage to their psyche, their soul that being disempowered can lead to. I want to protect them, to guide them and help them in anyway I can, yet I feel as though there is no way to approach this to ladies who have been so oppressed and abused in the past that they see no problem with the old paradigm.

Stephanie uses an image in her workbook of a sketch of a woman laid on her back on a flat hard surface, tubes attached to her with IVs, blood pressure cuff, heart monitor fetal monitor, several hands around bottom half of her body holding instruments like scissors, clamps, scalpels, vacuum extractor, forceps and she seems ot be unconscious, prone, empty, given up, dead to the world.... It is obscene to me. When I think of the recent images I have found in books and videos of exctatic births, smiling women full of life and love and freedom to express them self through birth, to transform their souls in the process of birthing, in becoming a mother through determination and sweat and tears of joy, overcoming their fears, moving through their previous ideas of what it should be, ignoring the lies that have been ingrained into our brains for so long, looking at the image of this victimized woman incites horror.

To think that women willingly put their entire lives in the hands of doctors everyday that result in trauma that is unnecessary is enough to debilitate me with sadness. But I am choosing to rise above this sadness and turn it into passion to teach, to inform, to love and to protect the sancity of Womanhood and seek the light in this darkness.

I will do my best to educate and trust that the Universe will bring me families that are ready for this path, people will seek me out because they are ready to experience something other than what they have been lead to believe as the only truth there can be. I am special in my own way and have much to offer to our community. I know that I can make a difference and just by me being present and focused I am opening up choices and leading people down a path towards something bigger and better than they ever dreamed possible.

After my last birth, 7 years ago, I still process and reprocess that experience and learn from it all the time. As I study more and understand more, I see ways in which I can still utilize that strength to grow and become the woman I am meant to be, the mother I am and will continue to be and I will mother more than my own children.

I am so filled with excitement as I make this journey. I read a quote today that said if the ship doesn't come in, swim out to it. I am knee deep and ready to tread water to get to this ship. I am meeting it half way as it makes its way to me!

Sacred Waters Birth Center in Eugene, OR

Today I was blessed with the experience of meeting with the midwives and 2 student midwives of Sacred Waters Birth Center. I was pleasantly surprised by how welcome I felt, how much interest was given to me and how well I feel like I could fit into their center in the future. The building is a 2 story home that is in a fairly busy part of town. There are several exam rooms, a birth suite and a HUGE jacuzzi tub for water births. There is a big room for waiting family and friends. There are many educational brochures and ads for childbirth education and prenatal yoga. Pictures decorate the tack boards around the center of happy moms and babies. Several potted plants give color and life to the each room.

Anita, the primary midwife of the center, who started it (I think) 9 years ago is a skilled self taught midwife who clearly is the matriarchal goddess of the center. She is warm and motherly with a beautiful smile and long hair. Erin is another beautiful and friendly woman who is excited and passionate about birth. Zoey and Janell, 2 students, were bright and cheery, welcoming and full of excitement. It was really nice to meet these ladies and just makes me even more anxious to get to the conference.

It looks like I will need to establish some sort of curriculum and start advertising to do educational seminars and community outreach about csec awareness and natural childbirth. Once I get that in place, hopefully before April, I can present that to Anita and possibly find a spot in their busy schedule to have classes there and promote the birth center. A few of their students are due to move on this year and if the timing is right and I am fitting in properly, there is a pretty good chance I could be apprenticing at that facility. It would be a dream come true! I don't want to get too excited yet though. I need to be able to make some money doing classes to make it work. I also need to get enrolled in academics, on top of school and kids. It will be taxing for sure but there is no work more satisfying to me than helping moms and babies find a safe place to do what they need to do in birthing.

keeping my fingers crossed!