The Path of a Student Midwife

In an economy like ours at the moment, it is not a really good time to be trying to sort out what being a student without traditional funding is like. My family, as most families are barely making ends meet and a lot of months, we just aren’t making it. Being a student is challenging financially at the best of times for most established families but it seems like it is more challenging when your chosen career path is midwifery.

I sigh as I say this. It feels like the story I have been living in for a couple years now. Perhaps it is just a story, and honestly I sincerely hope it is because then the possibilities of it being different are still there. The interesting thing about this story is that because I don’t have the finances to just pay for school, it leads me down these other roads of exploration asking the question “isn’t there another way to do this?”

What I have come to realize is that there are actually several ways to do this. None of them are exactly a clean cut clear path. Some of these choices involve leaving California (actually quite a few involve leaving California) and either coming back after becoming a CPM and challenging the State of California for a license or taking an approved but funded on site program somewhere else and then coming back and applying for a license here.  Of course, there’s always the option of just leaving, becoming a CPM and not ever coming back since in some other states, that would be all you need to become a midwife there.The other choice is just straight borrow the money, if you have someone to do this from, and pay for an accredited program here in California (there is at least one on site option here now) or through a distance program. Noen of which can help you get loans or funding and none of which provide payment plans that work when your family is still just trying to put food on the table.

In an apprenticeship model of training, it is so challenging to figure out the finances of the thing. It costs money to be working with midwives. In our area, midwives don’t pay their students to go to births. In other parts of the country and even the state, they typically pay a stipend. However when you become a student you also will end up paying the midwives to be your preceptor, which in Los Angeles, most midwives will waive this fee. However,  this means that we are working and on call for free while we can’t hold a traditional job and are required to pay for school and somehow make ends meet. WTF? It’s crazy and it’s no wonder we lose so many prospective midwives. It’s sincerely frustrating.

And honestly, the only reason I am still on this path is because it is my calling. What are you going to do when you get the call? Figure it out, that’s what and in my case and the case of many others, struggle in the process.

But I am answering the call and at this point, that is all I can do.

I am giving myself one more month to get the path into midwifery sorted out. I am not starting a school in order to become a midwife, although at some point due to my passion in education and empowerment, you may see that from me. For now, let’s just try and get one thing sorted out. And that one thing is how I am going to answer that call fully and move into being a primary midwife under supervision while being enrolled in a program here in Los Angeles or by just moving out of the state and giving up on school instead becoming a CPM. I honestly can’t even hear another list of options at this point. It’s too much.

It has taken me two years to get to this point, but I think I have finally realized that I have been limiting myself by thinking that I had to pursue midwifery in a certain way. Just in the last couple of weeks, I began to realize this and decided to let go of the choice to do the module based schooling program I thought I was going to do.

This has opened up a whole bunch of new option on how I will continue forward as a student midwife. This is great because honestly; raising a family, assisting at births with a very busy midwifery practice along with assisting in prenatals and post partum visits, running a doula practice and being an educator, all while trying to financially contribute to my life is hard enough. If you add having to come up with a massive amount of money for school, it gets way too overwhelming to even consider moving forward.

So for the moment, I am focusing on the things that are right in front of me, while researching whether or not I can attend a non-accredited school or academic program while still sitting for my license in the state of California.  These are big decisions, but at the moment I am having faith that the strength of my passion for midwifery and for learning will lead me to the right place at the right time.

The path into midwifery is varied and changes depending on what kind of midwife you would like to be. It is a lot to figure out and many aspiring midwives wonder which is the right path for them.

It is because this question comes up so much around me that I began to work on putting together this blog about my own path. It is a way to let aspiring midwives know what choices might be ahead of them and what this path can look like. For those of you who have been following my journey it is so you can get a closer look at what I am up to and if you want to support me in this journey, you might begin to have a clue on how you can do this.

My own beginning down this road doesn’t have one definitive starting place. You could say it began with my son’s traumatic hospital birth. You could say it started when I attended my best friends birth center birth 10 years ago. You can say it began in working as doula in local hospitals for years. You can say it was a home water birth with my daughter that began it. You can say it was all the birth and education trainings I did as I began to realize that empowering birth was my passion. You could say it was the time I spent teaching and learning spiritual and personal empowerment for myself and other women. You can say that it began when a friend (who is also a midwife) asked me to join her practice as a student. My father might say it began when I was born;-) Likely it is the culmination of all these things that led me down this road and for all those things I am grateful.

My own path is to become a California State Licensed, Certified Professional Midwife. This path is very different from becoming a Nurse Midwife and it’s a less clear and less defined path to take. Talk to a different midwife and you will get a different story about how she got to where she is. There are some similarities, but all in all each woman has her own journey and her own path into midwifery.

The requirements for becoming a licensed midwife in the State of California can be found in the following places: the NARM website, the MEAC website and the Medical Board of California’s website. It is quite helpful to review these websites. Although they will tell you what the requirements are, they will not tell you clearly what the best path might be for you or how you should get there. Thus there is a lot of confusion amongst women who are drawn into becoming midwives about what to do with this information once they have it.

One thing that I have found for myself is that becoming a birth doula was a good start. I have been a birth doula supporting women in birthing for 10 years (off and on). This has helped me to begin the process of learning how to support women in the pregnancy, birthing and post partum experience. It has given me and my family an idea of what it’s like for me to be on call. And for every hospital birth I have attended as a supporting part of a woman’s birth team, I have learned more about what is normal in pregnancy and what isn’t. I have also learned a lot about what a woman really needs to be empowered in her birthing experience and about how to support her with achieving this.

Being a doula is not only a financially support to me through the experience of becoming a midwife, but it also has taught me a lot about myself as a woman called to empowering birthing women. It has showed me that I don’t want to be a nurse midwife and that I am not interested in working in the hospitals in any other capacity (aside from being a doula). It also has given me an sincere education about what is missing in most hospital care and in the medical system at large. It is exactly what is missing that I believe midwifery care is all about: compassionate, empowered, holistic and human centered care, especially for low risk women, babies and their families.

Another thing that I have realized is that the best way to begin anything (especially midwifery) is to take it step by step. So after making the decision to move ahead on this path, my first step was by working in a midwifery practice as an administrative assistant/receptionist. Most midwifery practices are small and don’t need this but The Sanctuary is different. They are a homebirth AND birth suite midwifery practice that also includes a wellness center, retail center and midwifery training program. It has been a great learning for me to be a part of this practice and beginning in the administration side enabled me to figure out what it takes to be in a group midwifery practice like this one. It also has given me the opportunity to talk to many different midwives and birth professionals about their journeys so that I could begin to formulate what my own path would look like.
I then had to figure out what school I would attend. I decided to work with the National Midwifery Institute. It ultimately took me many months to decide that this school was the best for me and I thoroughly researched both prices and philosophies before saying yes to this program. One thing that was particularly attractive to me was that it offers an option to take a step before signing fully up with the program, which seemed like a good way to figure out if it was the best school for me as well as what the path ahead might look like as a student.
This course is the Heart and Hands program taught by Elizabeth Davis in San Francisco. After saying yes to taking this course, I spent a good deal of time driving to and from the Bay Area and Los Angeles for my weekly classes. Some women choose to take this course long distance, but I found that being there was such an enriching and enjoyable experience, even with the challenges of driving. Ultimately it was one of the BEST things I could have done for myself. It was a great place for me to truly discover myself as a woman supporting women in birthing and it solidified my calling to become a midwife.
After taking this training, I realized that I might need to check out some other midwives before I committed to one practice. After having this experience I have begun to encourage others who are looking for an apprenticeship/student midwife relationship to attend a few births and get to know different midwives. A midwife/apprentice relationship can last anywhere between 2.5 to 4 or 5 years, and it seems that making a good choice for both parties is important. Trying out a midwife by just doing a few births or interning with them for a brief time will gives you and the midwife the opportunity to get a feel for whether or not a longer term relationship will work. I call this midwife dating;-)

At this point, I have done my midwifery dating time and have settled into what I hope will be a long term relationship with the Sanctuary’s midwifery team. I have begun to move down the road by attending prenatal visits, post partum visits and births with the midwives. I am learning so much from each of them. There are currently 3 (moving into 4) midwives in this practice and since each of them has a way of practicing that is although cohesive with one another is slightly different, I am learning different things from each of them. I LOVE this element to my training. I know that other women prefer to learn in a one on one environment and I appreciate this, but I really enjoy hearing different approaches to the same issues.

The biggest ongoing issue that I have been having is how to financially make the jump from contributing financial member of my family to being a student, which includes all the costs of tuition, supplies and books, along with taking time off for attending births and prenatal visits. Being a student in a program that isn’t funded by the federal or state government means no scholarships, no grants, no federal loans and with the economy being what it is right now, no private loans either. NMI offers a payment program but even this has proven to be challenging to work out since it also requires taking a cut in pay to focus on being a student. I am still in the process of working this part out. It is my sincere hope that this part will get easier and that sometime soon I will actually figure out how to pay for schooling while being an apprenticing midwife.
Through this journey I have learned that there are many routes into midwifery, which I am sure is part of what makes this process confusing for aspiring midwives. The one I have chosen is only one of many. I have met midwives who went to Texas to go to a midwifery school there and then came back to California to get their licensing. I have met midwives who did short apprenticeships with several different midwives over a long period of time. I have met midwives who began by apprenticing with unlicensed midwives and on this same path who later decided to go through the channels to get licensed.  I have met nurses who decided to not become nurse midwives and instead went through a challenge program to become licensed. I have met women who did part of their training with a midwife and then decided to go to a foreign country to get a deeper understanding of complicated skills (Bali, Haiti, Africa, Costa Rica, you name it).

All these routes into midwifery are all worthy and all worth looking at. Ultimately it is about who you are and what is truly calling you forth.  Midwives have said to me that one thing about midwifery is that it isn’t just about “being a midwife” anymore than having a baby is about just the birth. It is about the journey, the process and about “the becoming” that is at the heart of being called forth into the path of serving and empowering women and babies at the gateways of their own “becoming”.