Thinking

As I was sitting in church this past Sunday, I was thinking that I hadn't written regularly in a journal for quite some time. Before we left Idaho? After? I am not sure.

In my midwife course, we have been encouraged to write about out journey to becoming a midwife. I have been thinking about this a lot lately.

Recently, I was looking back to pinpoint just where/when it was I decided that becoming a midwife is what I wanted/needed to do. It was definitely in Idaho because in New Mexico I had not reached that point. It was then, I believe, the seed was planted.

Sherri was an awesome midwife. A couple of Sunday's ago, I took one of my journals to church to show the kids in my class one of the ways we can help ourselves remember things. As I read some of the entries, I ran across my first meeting with Sherri. At first, I thought she was an odd duck but the longer we spoke, the more I grew to like her.

Because of Sherri and her library, I learned much about midwifery, birth, and a little about myself. That was a beginning, but not of my desire to become a midwife.

Not planning on having any more babies but always wanting to be prepared, once we were in Idaho, I looked midwives up in the Yellow Pages and found Barb Rawlings and Womancare Midwifery. I don't remember if I found Denise Midstokke in the phone book but any time we drove south of Sandpoint, we'd see her sign: Pend Oreille Midwifery. Also, and this is key, I went to the library to see what books they had on midwives and/or midwifery. There were some on nurse-midwives but that wasn't what I was interested in. I was interested in a book called Sisters on a Journey. It is a compilation of short biographies of midwives in the US. One was Ina Mae Gaskin. Sherri had at least two copies of her book, Spiritual Midwifery, which I declined to read because I thought, "Yeah, right. What can a bunch of hippies know about spirituality?" (Which is an indicator of how little I knew about it.) While reading about Ina Mae, something hit me, I'm not sure what, and I just had to read her book. I requested a copy because there wasn't one at the library and it was something akin to torture waiting. Once it arrived, I devoured it and years later when I won the trip to Portland, I bought my own copy at Powell's.

Even then, I'm not sure it had entered my thoughts to become a midwife.

Before Seth was born, Barb and Denise were both visited. I liked both of them but someone else liked Denise more so that is who we chose. I think we got some basic information on each such as short bio-blurbs, and I learned that Barb had graduated from Seattle Midwifery School. So had Sherri. I looked SMS up on the internet and requested information. At this point, even though I didn't know it, I was on my journey.

In spite of the fact that we were only eight hours away from Seattle, I knew the chances of my going were pretty minimal because I had no money and no support from home. Now, SMS has been absorbed into Bastyr University so finances would not be a concern. However, having moved across the country, distance would be.