Midwife Matters

Brooklyn Center Clinic

My path to midwifery started in my senior year in college.  While working toward my degree in Anthropology and Spanish at Lawrence University I, quite randomly, chose midwives as a topic for a research paper.  The process of writing that paper was transformative for me and I decided that I wanted to become a midwife myself.  I began my midwifery training in El Paso, Texas in a free-standing birth center and teaching clinic. The birth center was staffed entirely with midwives and the clients were almost exclusively Spanish-speaking.   After working there for almost 2 years, I moved to the East Coast and got my Nursing degree and Masters of Science in Nursing from Yale University.   At the end of my masters program I had an internship here at HealthPartners.  I was hired shorly after my internship in 1999 and have been working with and learning from this wonderful group of midwives ever since.

My husband, Jim, and I met playing ultimate frisbee when we were both in graduate school.  We have 2 young boys, Danny and Thomas.  Their energy is contagious and we find ourselves very busy biking, skiing, skating, reading and playing various ball games and of course, frisbee.  When I am alone my favorite place to be is in my garden.

One of my favorite parts about our practice at HealthPartners is that we care for such a variety of women.  Midwifery, to me, is about helping women through their own unique experience. Caring for women from so many different backgrounds and different stages of their lives makes our practice incredibly rewarding.

When I was in school I came across this quote:

“Imagine that you are a midwife: Do good without show or fuss. Facilitate what is happening rather that what you think ought to be happening. When the baby is born, the parents will rightly say: ‘We did it ourselves.”

I think it is a wonderful description of midwives and the work we do.