Midwife Connection

“History never looks like history when you are living through it.” - John W. Gardner By Karline Wilson-Mitchell, Heather Clarke, and Maria Valentin-Welch The women of color who paved the way for modern midwifery in the United States probably never envisioned the amazing impact their life's work would have on the thousands who followed – just as we today can scarcely believe that our stories will feed momentum in the women’s health movement of the future. Many of us sighed with relief as we...

on things that are not, and perhaps cannot be, taught By Stephanie Tillman, CNM, MSN I began outlining this post on the back of an Audre Lorde essay, sent to me by a friend who shared it with other first-year clinicians struggling to make the day-to-day happen. In "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," excerpted from Sister Outsider, Lorde writes of the time after her breast cancer diagnosis and what she describes as her 'living': "...for every real word spoken, for...

by Lorrie Kline Kaplan, ACNM Chief Executive Officer After several months of planning and much hard work, ACNM together with our friends at the American Association of Birth Centers (AABC) held a briefing yesterday on Capitol Hill –and it was nothing short of a success! It was our privilege to share the good news and policy implications of the landmark, large-scale study published last week in ACNM’s Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, titled “Outcomes of Care in Birth Centers: Demonstratio...

By Walker Karraa, MFA, MA Previous studies conducted by Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (2011), and Lobel and Deluca (2007) suggested that some women benefit from a planned cesarean delivery compared to women who do not plan for interventions – particularly in lower rates of depression and anxiety. A recent study, Mode of birth and women’s psychological and physical wellbeing in the postnatal period (Rowlands & Redshaw, 2012) sheds light on the growing lit...