Midwife Matters

St. Paul Clinic

I’ve been a midwife 30 yrs, (caught my 1st baby Jan 82 and graduated Dec 82)

My path to midwifery:  Nursing, first I was an active duty Navy Nurse for 3 years and then worked at Parkland in Dallas,  ICU then L&D

Graduated from U of KY and lucky enough to do a midwifery internship @ Booth Maternity Center in Philadelphia and fortunate to be a staff midwife there before starting a private practice with a group of Booth midwives.

Worked doing family planning when I had small children.  I then lived in West Virginia and worked at a birth center there for 6 yrs and have been working for HealthPartners since 1999.

The  favorite part of the job:   Enjoy the variety of care I give from guiding a family through pregnancy, labor and birth to helping the mom breast feed successfully.  I like that I can help empower women through this progress.  It is very satisfying to have mom’s return for subsequent pregnancies and watch girls turn into young women.

Outside of work I like keeping active and fit, no longer run, but I walk, cycle and enjoy weight and yoga classes at the YMCA.  I sing with our synagogue choir and belong to a book club and am enriched by the friends I’ve made though these activities.

I was an Air Force brat and lived many places in the US and overseas.  I biked  (from Minnetonka to Sacramento) with another future midwife. I took the opportunity to travel abroad for nearly a year including living on an  Israeli Kibbutz  for 3 months before going to graduate school.    All of this experience was before midwifery and before marriage and motherhood which has also enriched my life immensely.  My daughter is almost 23 and is living in Israel and in the Israeli Defense forces as a ‘soldier teacher.’  So much fun to visit her and see what she has accomplished in her life.  My son is 21, works and is going to community college

Little known facts about me:  I have been to all but 3 of the 50 states and performed at Town Hall in NYC with an Israeli dance troupe

My inspiration:  “be careful choosing friends, you’ll end up like them”  I ended up running marathons with friends, biking with friends, dancing with friends and now sing  and in a book club with  friends.