Thank you.
To those who know human rights are essential to optimal maternity care, who work to develop relationships of trust with the women they serve, who believe in providing individualized care and take into account each unique woman's personal history, culture, family structure and desires to help them achieve the safest and most satisfying birth possible for their baby.
Thank you!
To those who tell us 'Your body is not a lemon!' .....thank you.
For the average healthy woman wanting to birth her baby vaginally without force of intervention, the model of midwifery care is an excellent place to start! I encourage any mother to at the very least interview a midwife, so you truly have an idea of what your care options are. Birth Centers provide safe and beautiful spaces to welcome your baby and of course, there's no place like home for a birth to live up to your conceptions. I found my excellent homebirth midwife through the Texas Association of Midwives, where will you find yours?
Some families have found their midwifery care on Ina May's famous Farm, be sure to add her latest book Birth Matters: A Midwife's Manifesta to your library - I know I can't wait!
"Classically, midwives have been the wise women who looked out for their communities: they were the women to whom you would go to get help with burying your grandparents; the women who would come with hot meals for the family when the husbands have been ill; they were mature women who never gossiped or betrayed confidences. They furthered wise action and harmony in their communities, and in turn, their communities took care of and honored the midwives. A midwife’s role should be to promote harmony." ~ Gloria Lemay
"My community made me a midwife by asking me to attend births, I apprenticed directly to birth itself. My promise as spiritual midwife is to honor the journey, be attentive to what presents itself, and remind a mother by my presence that she already knows how to give birth." ~Jeannine Parvati Baker
Give back to those who mother so many by engaging in ways to change birth globally and get involved locally by supporting groups that work to protect and increase access to midwifery care.
To those midwives who attend twins and breech babies at home - thank you from the bottom of my heart!
