[ Passionate Midwifery Education - Installment 23 ]

A great way to test whether midwifery is a life path for you is to attend a Midwifery Today Conference. The conference in Eugene, Oregon, March 14–18, 2007, is especially designed for aspiring midwives* to learn a lot about midwifery in a short amount of time. This year for the first time we are offering two full days of Beginning Midwifery. On the first day you will study the Art of Midwifery, Normal Birth and Prenatal Care, Being With Woman and Apprenticeship.

On the second day you will be introduced to student-centered Midwifery Education, Paths and Program, Emotional Issues in Labor, Trusting Birth and much more. The teachers for these classes are dedicated to mentoring midwives. They are very accessible, as are the other speakers we invite. Do not hesitate to approach them.

The rest of the conference is designed with both beginners and experienced midwives in mind. You will learn about the issues surrounding birth, as well as a motherbaby-centered ways to practice. We will cover everything from Communication to International Issues. Time to dance, sing, share stories and give gifts are built into the conference program. Each of the roundtables gives you extra time to discuss fascinating subjects in small groups.

Your head and heart will be full when you go home to ponder all you have learned. You will have ideas, options and paths to ponder, but you will also have a sense of possible directions to take as you consider midwifery, childbirth education or being a doula or an activist. Your path may be circular or straight, but meanwhile you can serve motherbaby while on the path, with a destination clearly in mind.

*I use the word midwife to refer to all birth practitioners. Whether you are a mother, doula, educator or understanding doctor or nurse you are doing midwifery when you care for motherbaby.

http://www.midwiferytoday.com/conferences/Eugene2007/

— love, Jan
Jan Tritten, Mother of Midwifery Today

[ Passionate Midwifery Education - Installment 22 ]

More from Elizabeth Davis' Education Workshop in Germany

In her education seminar, Elizabeth Davis talked a lot about the circle of women and its importance. Explaining how women think, she said that women in a stress response, as you may know, tend and befriend. The circle is needed to keep the community healthy. Women need female circles. We mirror beauty and love from friends. Students are asked to give an overview of what midwifery is, what it looks like and how we respond. In the circle we reward not only academic learning, but the ability to see and draw out our value. We continually check in. What a wonderful addition to learning midwifery these circles can be.

The main ground rule is confidentiality. Another is that each member has the right to pass rather than speak. The overall idea of the circle is: Healer, heal thyself. We work to keep alive the passion in our calling.

Elizabeth spoke of "educating dragons." The reference is to people we have to deal with throughout life such as a head nurse or difficult doctor, and even at times a sister midwife. She says a midwife needs to "run oxytocin" herself. In other words, calm breeds calm.

"We want our students to learn a foreign language—the medical model world." She has students learn how something feels by role playing. She teaches compassion by having students role play each person in the room: doctor, midwife, dad, mom, pediatrician, nurse. These drama scenarios are great learning experiences.

Wisdom is a hard quality to calibrate; it resides within every woman. See if your training program will institute student circles. The wisdom passed and shared will be a passion producing fuel for learning.

— love, Jan
Jan Tritten, Mother of Midwifery Today

[ Passionate Midwifery Education - Installment 21 ]

More from Elizabeth Davis' Education Workshop in Germany

Elizabeth Davis asks "What is it about conventional education that didn't work for me?"

We were not allowed to show our intuitive side. Women want context. They are aware of what is going on in the room. Women want to know why they need to know something. Give them context; they need to know who, what, where and why.

We are taught in a male model that is a brick building model, piece by piece. We are not supposed to ask why. They will tell you at the end.

Female thinking is spiral, circular. We spiral around looking at the same material from different aspects. As we climb the spiral we are seeing different views. Imagine making a spiral pot from rolled clay. Many of us did it in grade school.

A woman will ask for the opinion of every friend she knows, even though she will likely receive opposing views. After considering everything, she will make her decision. We are like a cauldron sharing half-baked ideas, stirring them up in a brainstorm.

Men are the opposite. In infancy boys are into tangible objects. Girls are more interested in the human face. Women can multitask - they are comfortable with many ideas and tasks coming at the same time. These distinctions in style make a huge difference in your educational program. If the program you choose is designed on the male model, the fit might not work for you. Doing midwifery requires that you learn to tap into your feminine side, because the women we are with will be best served by this side of you. This is especially so since they are going through an event that is ultimately female.

This editorial is adapted from Elizabeth's wise words. To inquire about her school, e-mail her at: elizabeth@elizabethdavis.com

— love, Jan
Jan Tritten, Mother of Midwifery Today

[ Passionate Midwifery Education - Installment 20 ]

In a Midwifery Education class at Midwifery Today's conference in Bad Wildbad, Germany, on October 26, 2006, Elizabeth Davis outlined some beautiful concepts for Midwife Educators from around the world.

According to Elizabeth, the first principle of Midwifery Education is confidence-building. She tells us, "Never separate a woman from her confidence." That applies to you as a student as well as to the women you serve.

She also helped us explore the concepts of compassion, caring, being a confidante, respect, passion and patience. These threads are important in the program you choose and should be the hallmark of the midwifery teachers in your program. As I have said before, you should be treated with respect and dignity as a student because you will be entrusted to the highest calling I can think of—caring for the mother and her baby.

Elizabeth asks: "How does my program cultivate these capabilities with skill and relevant information." How does your program?

She tells us that a midwife is a midwife because she has danced with fear. She tells us that a midwife honors things for themselves. She likes being at the portal of life and death. During dramatic changes midwives are there. We are trying to recreate in others the full scope of being with the woman at all stages of life. We want more for women and for ourselves. Does this describe you?

Before embarking on this long journey, first test whether midwifery is for you. Elizabeth has a nice self-test where women take the "Heart and Hands" workshops to determine whether midwifery is what they want to do with their lives. Remember that midwifery takes all the love you have to give, and then some more. It can overtake your life, and because it requires such dedication it probably should. We can talk about balance later.

— love, Jan
Jan Tritten, Mother of Midwifery Today

[ Passionate Midwifery Education - Installment 19 ]

I have told you something of my own Midwifery education (see Installment 16 http://midwiferytoday.livejournal.com/6542.html ). One our biggest blessings was to have Marion teach us a for whole year in a program modeled after Frontier Nursing Services' CNM program. She condensed the program, teaching us just the parts that were relevant to our homebirth practices. The curriculum was not very medicalized because this was 25 years ago. I am sure most curricula now are very different.

Besides teaching our didactic lessons Marion joined us in our practices. We already had very full practices of 3–5 homebirths per month. She would work one-on-one with us during prenatal and postpartum visits. She also went to births with us. This gave us a rare opportunity to learn midwifery more deeply. Marion also sweetly acknowledged that she had learned from us! I was amazed by the learning experience.

Shadowing and teaching within the practice is a good idea for all mentors, although I am sure that midwifery can be taught in many other unique and functional ways. In the UK some programs require students to do caseload midwifery.

I would really appreciate you sharing various models with me through this column. I have no special gift for midwifery education other than a burning desire to welcome new midwives into this beautiful calling.

I believe that the full year of intensive help within our practices was a time of intense learning geared to exactly what was going on there. We were still quite young midwives, having done only about a hundred births, but with total care. After this great learning experience we were able to practice with Marion for a few years. When I started Midwifery Today Marion joined us as a regular columnist and our mentoring relationship continues. She has been an incredible gift to many midwives in our community. I hope and pray every one of you finds a Marion on your journey.

— love, Jan
Jan Tritten, Mother of Midwifery Today

[ Passionate Midwifery Education - Installment 18 ]

Each of us must take responsibility for our own education. This is so even for those who are planning to attend a midwifery school. You need to find the school that will best help you learn your calling in the way you are called. Some of you will be nurse-midwives, others will be direct entry midwives and some will choose to be lay midwives. You need to make sure you can be the best midwife possible within your calling. A key issue is that you will be serving motherbaby and the family and you will need to determine the most important areas of study. This is true even beyond your formal or informal training. Your midwifery, doula or childbirth education will continue for your whole life.

You may find that some of the curriculum is not helpful, but you typically need to do a certain amount of busy work. Your job all along the path of lifelong education is to be the best you can be. Is learning homeopathy more important than pharmacology? The answer will be different for each of you and may change as you journey through your midwifery life. There is no wrong answer but you need to be proactive in your path. I know conference attendees often have difficulty choosing classes—they have so much to learn and be excited about. For most of us, our birth life is one of the most important aspects of our life.

I hope as you look around this amazing world at all the possibilities for your education you chose carefully from the huge smorgasbord of educational opportunities we have today. We can learn from traditional midwives in other countries or from dozens of disciplines. It is an exciting journey. I hope some of you will write and let us know about your path and how you choose what and how to add to your skills.

Our midwifery is often closely wrapped up in our identities partly because we are called to the path that requires all of the love we have to give, then a little more. Welcome to midwifery.

— love, Jan
Jan Tritten, Mother of Midwifery Today

[ Passionate Midwifery Education - Installment 17 ]

Having passed the 25 year mark with Ancient Art Midwifery Institute, I am in a phase of reflection. There was a time when my promotional efforts were geared toward financial survival. However, the promotional efforts for the past few years are motivated by my extreme enthusiasm for what we offer. We continually add or refine more benefits and options, enhance our support and revise the curriculum. The program is so much better than it was even a year ago. I get so excited just making a list of all the new ways we have devised to help our students research, discern, file and even retain all things "birth."

But what really feeds my soul is the feedback from students about how the total program is life-changing, stretching them in ways they did not expect. We don't teach a student a checklist of what one needs to know to be a midwife; rather we walk with her as she BECOMES a midwife. We address so many issues other than pregnancy, birth and babies that are relevant to midwifery: character, integrity, logic and reasoning, communication skills, decision making, organization and time management, study skills, navigating the apprenticeship and preparation for practice. And at the same time we approach everything academic from a non-academia mindset.

Not that we don't delve deeply into the academics...Advanced Midwifery Studies is unapologetically the most challenging course on the planet. That is our trademark, so to speak. I did not design this course to be the "most" anything as there was nothing for comparison. I just knew that midwives needed to know "our stuff and theirs too," that knowing WHY we do things would give us the power and voice to articulate the validity of the profession. But more importantly, the work is comprehensive in order to ensure that my students will be prepared to practice the profession in the "trust birth" way. My theory is that knowing more leads to doing less, interfering less. And now in my grandmothering stage as a midwifery educator I see proof of my theory. Yes, my students are usually walking encyclopedias, but they are also confident, birth-trusting, other-centered, wisdom-seeking, family-oriented, hands-off, with-woman midwives.

— Carla Hartley
Ancient Art Midwifery Institute
http://www.ancientartmidwifery.com/

[ Passionate Midwifery Education - Installment 16 ]

I told you in the last installment about receiving "the call" after my first homebirth. In my deep drive toward midwifery I read everything I could get my hands on as I was nursing my baby and caring for my family. I could not get enough. I read OB textbooks and birth books like I was eating chocolate. I loved it. Then I heard Marion was going to teach some classes out near the coast about an hour and a half away. I joined some other aspiring midwives and we drove out to our half-day class telling birth stories and making new friends, midwife friends. (I want to talk more about midwife friends later.) Marion would teach us the basics. She began with the four types of pelvises, then prenatal care, hemorrhage, shoulder dystocia and so on.

As a practicing midwife she always had a fresh supply of amazing birth stories which she would tell in great detail, teaching us the language of birth, both medical and social. I believe the best part of midwifery education is the birth story. It teaches so much. It illustrates what we are doing. It demonstrates the lesson. It extends our experience. When I hear birth stories, especially from a midwife's point of view, I almost feel like I have gone to another birth.

Those of us attending Marion's classes already had our homebirth practices. I was with the birth coop (see first installment of this column: http://www.midwiferytoday.com/enews/enews0804.asp#ed ). In class, we would bring Marion our cases, both prenatally and after the births. This added such a great dimension to the education, having real-life birth stories for all students to discuss. Marion would give us insights and considerations to check out. It almost felt like she was with us as we met with our mothers. In fact, at every birth I ever attended, whether Marion was there physically or not, I felt I had access to her. She got more than one middle of the night call to help us assess what was going on with a labor.

This is true mentoring. I feel so blessed to have had Marion as a my mentor. I hope each one of you finds a mentor.

— love, Jan
Jan Tritten, Mother of Midwifery Today

[ Passionate Midwifery Education - Installment 15 ]

After I had my first homebirth I got the call, with a vengeance, to become a midwife. The call is a most amazing desire and drive, to be on the path to achieve the goal. I am not sure how others would describe it. Let me know if you have a definition for the call. My first homebirth was my second baby and it was a birth that made me high for many years. Perhaps the high was made stronger by a typical medically-bungled first birth. I did not know birth could be so ecstatic, powerful and life-changing. This drive began as soon as she was born. I kept reading my childbirth books. My husband said, "You've already had the baby, why are you still reading the books?" I said, "I think there is something more here." Wow, little did I know then that God had issued this intense calling, from the minute she was born.

Anne Frye relates her call to midwifery, which came early in life: "I was working in a cooperative store in San Francisco as a clerk. One of the employees there said she was going to the Holistic Childbirth Institute and her intention was to be a midwife. When she told me that, I remembered this dream that I had when I was about eight years old. I was down in the fog, near the water, on a dock. There were all these people standing around. There was a woman giving birth in the middle of the people and I went down to help her. There were no details in the dreams. It was a very foggy kind of a dream. But I remembered the dream very clearly and I just knew that that was what I was supposed to do."

The call is an interesting spiritual touch. In Mexico midwives have told me if you do not answer the call bad things start happening to you, like you might break your leg, until you answer the call. I tell you this so if called you will at least begin to answer it. Often you have small children so your answer to the call might have to be getting on the path in a slow walk. That is OK. Just answer it. I have said midwifery will take all the love you have to give and then some. By midwifery I mean any part of the work, whether doula, childbirth educator, activist or mother supporter. I refer to all as midwives because I believe we are all midwives. It is a natural part of women's role in all societies. It just dominates more of our lives if we are actually caring for pregnant women.

Send us the story of your call to midwifery!

— love, Jan
Jan Tritten, Mother of Midwifery Today

[ Passionate Midwifery Education - Installment 14 ]

This is the last of three installments from the article "Apprenticeship: Do You Really Want One?" by Renata Hillman in the Midwifery Education issue of Midwifery Today, Issue 78, Summer 2006. You can read many more articles on paths to midwifery education by buying this issue.

5. Friendship/Loyalty. I suppose some apprenticeships exist without this; they may see their work as just business. Within my practice, however, friendship and loyalty are essential. How can you spend three long days at a birth that ends up in a transport with a person who isn't loyal? How can you openly grieve the loss of an infant with a non-friend? How can you openly communicate your fears about the complications, legal issues, money problems or the effects on your family with anyone other than a friend whom you know to be loyal to you?

As a midwife, I know the feeling of having that loyalty broken and the friendship voided. That experience was the most unsettling I ever experienced in my practice. Up to that point, I had naively opened up my practice and confided freely, believing all seekers were loyal to me in return. As is the case with integrity, not everyone has this quality. Both midwife and apprentice need to carefully evaluate their views on the relationship within the apprenticeship. Do you seek to keep it strictly business? Do you choose to open up all your personal and practice information to this person that you are just getting to know? How does each of you feel about the apprenticeship developing into a friendship? How much loyalty does each of you expect from the other?

Those who are seeking an apprenticeship need to remember that apprenticeships of the past were usually financed by parents. The apprentice worked very hard, usually for several years, to learn the vocation of the mentor. The mentor was not obligated to take on an apprentice and usually the position was in demand.

Apprentices need to make themselves worthy of the position, developing skills, studying, gathering equipment and being ready to learn to serve the midwife's clients and the midwife. In addition, they should expect to be willing to communicate their desires, needs, limitations, skills and, especially, birth philosophies. If apprenticeships increase the midwife's workload they will likely be few and far between. Midwives usually are already heavily burdened by the needs of the expectant mothers they serve, as well as their own families; taking on an apprentice is a gift and should be recognized as such by the apprentice.

For midwives who are considering apprenticing as a way to pass on what they were given, I recommend a few things that may help prevent some of the mistakes I made:

* Clearly share your expectations in writing to prevent later misunderstandings.
* Clarify time requirements and limitations.
* State up front any fees that you will charge the apprentice, or whether she is to be paid.
* Inform her of equipment that she will be required to purchase.
* Share other study or academic requirements.

I share this information with a heart that desires that midwifery not only grow but thrive once again in our country, for us and for the sake of our granddaughters. I wish for all midwives-to-be to find a midwife willing to share what she has been given. I wish for all midwives to find apprentices who will assist their practice and clients.

— Renata Hillman

Renata Hillman is a Traditional Midwife, serving mothers along the gulf coast, as midwife and educator. She is mother to three and midwife to her first granddaughter. She is the Chairman of the Board for Midwives Alliance of Mississippi (MAM). She dreams of the day when midwifery is once again a respected calling in American society and mothers have many from which to choose.