Midwife Connection

by ACNM Guest Blogger Jennifer Williams, CNM When I was a little girl, I always thought there was a problem with our Nativity set. I could never figure out why the baby was barely dressed and separated from his mama, laying in a bucket of hay. He looked pretty cold and lonely to me. When I was in middle school, I looked at the Nativity set and thought, “Wow, Mary looks pretty good for just having given birth in a stable.” As you can see, my fascination with birth greatly preceded my plans for...

by Cassie Moore, ACNM Writer and Editor I think everyone does it on some level—you go home for the holidays and suddenly you feel like you’re 16 again (or whichever age was most angsty for you). You get into the same old argumentative pattern with your parents. Or a sibling teases you about something you’re sensitive about, like your appearance. Or you get sucked into a hysterical political argument. Or you feel guilty about not buying the right gift, or not buying a gift at all, or not drivi...

by ACNM Guest Blogger, Kimla McDonald, CNM “Please turn off that spotlight,” I asked the labor tech in the birth room as the baby’s head was crowning. I tend to do without the bright light, because my hands are really my eyes as the baby’s head emerges from the mother’s body. That gentle pressure we apply to ease the head out, gradually, is a kinetic act, not a visual one. It’s very much the same as popping the cork from a champagne bottle, as I learned recently helping out with my sister-in-la...

by Nancy Jo Reedy, CNM Last fall, we lost two influential cultural voices: Steve Jobs in October, and Andy Rooney in November. Both of these men left behind legacies that we as midwives can carry on and learn from. Steve Jobs, the founder and visionary behind Apple, died at the early age of 56. In his younger days, he left college—it wasn’t teaching him anything he wanted to learn. He followed his dream and vision by working with a friend in a garage to create Apple. He left Apple, founde...