As of November, 2010, I have attended over 700 births (both in private homes and at freestanding birth centers) in the North Central Texas and extended D/FW areas. For more than 600 of these I caught the baby either as an apprentice or primary midwife, or served as supervising midwife for an apprentice-led birth. Whenever possible I have personally handled a wide variety of prenatal, birth, and postpartum technical difficulties and the rare complication. By employing the use of herbal remedies, homeopathy, chiropractic, and international midwifery techniques I have avoided the need for transfer of care or transport to the hospital in most cases.
For 10 years following graduation in 1997, I served as a staff midwife at Family Birth Services in Grand Prairie, Texas. My final 2 years were as the senior midwife after Helen retired from direct client care.
I provided full service maternity care to clients coming to the birth center through its existing reputation. Prenatal care was provided at the birth center and clients chose either home or birth center births—whichever was their preference. Once I started building a reputation, I got many referrals and my private practice grew quickly.
Both as staff midwife and private practice midwife I especially enjoyed working with women from other countries. Having lived in three foreign countries myself, I knew how important communication is — especially at that stage of a woman’s life. If the language was anything other than Spanish, in which I am fluent, my clients brought a translator. My foreign clients were happy to feel safe, informed, and loved rather than scared and in the dark with mainstream prenatal care and hospital birth.
I also enjoyed working with first time mothers. They appreciated my approach that pregnancy and birth should be fun and educational.
Many out-of-hospital midwives were/are uncomfortable working with VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) clients. Although I had to spend much more time and energy with them, I considered it an honor to help them achieve a safe, gloriously rewarding, birth.
For most of those years I taught the childbirth preparation classes in English and fertility awareness classes (in English and Spanish) for those wishing natural family planning help to achieve or avoid pregnancy.
Having received an excellent education through the generosity of great midwives, I felt highly motivated to pass the gift on to new, aspiring midwives. I was the director of the apprenticeship program at Family Birth Services for 6 years and supervised 2 or 3 students on a continual basis. The thrill of being there with/for them as they “caught” their first baby, learned to shoulder the responsibility of full care, solved a tricky problem, graduated, and set up their own practice was so rewarding!
As time went by I was asked to teach other midwives how to train apprentices – on a local, state-wide, and national basis. The workshop I devised to accomplish this has helped a number of midwives improve their practice and increase the number of midwives available to serve the public.
