Midwife Connection

by Guest Blogger Aubre Tompkins, CNM Aubre Tompkins, CNM, is beginning her second year as a midwife. She has been guest blogging about the lessons she’s learned during her first year in a series for ACNM. Check out her first four posts here: Pearls #1 and #2: Remember to Breathe, and Listen Pearl #3: Emotions are Healthy Pearl #4: Be Humble Pearl #5: Be Water I have been struggling with how to title this Pearl. Wanting to phrase it just right and not have it sound too corny. Finally, a...

by Judy Mendel, ACNM Communications Intern US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius followed in my footsteps. I was fortunate to visit the Family Health and Birth Center (FHBC) in Washington, DC, just two days prior to the launch of the Strong Start initiative, aimed at increasing healthy deliveries and reducing preterm births. FHBC is one of the nonprofits comprising the Developing Families Center (DFC) in Northeast DC. FHBC recently offered to share with ACNM a bank of high-...

by ACNM Guest Blogger KC Bly, CNM, RN, WHNP This cartoon makes me chuckle. I admit it: it’s funny. But it’s funny because, like most humor, it relies on entrenched, constructed, seemingly benign stereotypes that really can do a disservice to an educated, empathetic populace. Feminism has finally managed to alert most thinking people to the damage that gender stereotypes do to girls and women; however, most of us are still blinded to the effects of these stereotypes on boys and men, and ...

by Cassie Moore, ACNM writer and editor It is often said that there is no perfect time to have a baby, but this rang especially true for Melicia Escobar, CNM, who was half of a two-person practice when she became pregnant in the summer of 2010. At the time, Escobar worked at Valley Birthplace and Woman Care, in Huntington Valley, PA, with just one other midwife, Barbara d’Amato, CNM, who founded the practice in 1987. When Escobar found out she was pregnant, she had to be upfront with d’Amato...

by ACNM Guest Blogger Jennifer Williams, CNM Unless you’ve been living under a rock or have been on call 24/7 for the past couple of days, it’s unlikely you’ve missed the news coverage of the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to pull its funding for breast cancer screening from women who seek care at Planned Parenthood. The initial announcement was met with quite a reaction, and many people expressed concern that this decision was based on an ideology to no longer support Planned Parenthoo...