05/05/2025
Before I go get a margarita to celebrate that International Midwife Day falls on Cinco de Mayo, let me share a little about my profession. 💫
🌸 First, there are many different paths and credentials of midwives around the world. The most important thing is that midwives exist and continue to exist, because it's the oldest profession and it's the most beautiful one.
🌸 Second, the scope of what a midwife practices varies based on her licensing, perhaps where she works, and what she chooses to offer. For me, I tuck my baby-catching into my Moonlight Midwifery business and I separate my women's health into Wild Herb. I want to combine naturopathy and functional medicine and woo woo approaches and I do that at Wild Herb. However, my credentials will remind you, I am a midwife, and a nurse. (I'm ALSO a Doctor of Naturopathy & Feminine Embodiment Coach)
🌸 Third, our licensing as midwives can be pretty restrictive and dishonoring. Georgia has archaic and confusing laws. It both says Nurse Midwives are independent practitioners of women's health and pregnancy, and it also says we are simply nurses that can't do anything without a physician signing us delegation to practice. Georgia chooses to not license and regulate midwifery paths and thereby demonstrates their lack of concern or care regarding mothers, babies and midwives.
🌸 Fourth, I have taken a personal journey recently to figure out my identity as a midwife. I don't like people asking what I do then having to listen to their birth stories. I may be a midwife, but I just wanted to silently enjoy being at my workout class. My profession is more than birth stories. Also, personally, my journey is one of navigating having wanted to be a mother and finding life's journey to be one of grieving that. I circle around to the identity of being a midwife in a way that is not just about celebrating pregnancies, but midwifing women. I belong to a grand, damn-beautiful profession that allows me to usher babies in earthside in love and also to accompany women like myself through hard phases, through hormonal changes, through life's journeys. I love that.