Introduction

Who exactly am I? I'm Kayla, a 19 year old who lives in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. I started this blog to document my journey towards self-improvement and my slow but sure journey towards my dream job...being a midwife! I'll warn you now, my thoughts, beliefs and opinions are different than mainstream America and I have no shame in expressing them. I promise I'll always back them up with facts, or on more personal issues, my own opinions and my own reasoning.

So, for my introductory post :)

What is a midwife?

A midwife is a trained professional who delivers babies and provides well-woman care. Essentially, they are an alternative to an OBGYN, and arguably a far superior alternative. It's laughable that midwives even are considered alternative, because until the past 100 years or so, doctors did not deliver babies regularly, if at all. Midwives have been around as long as people have been around. All sorts of babies were delivered by sisters, mothers, friends...breech, twins, posterior. Of course the death rate was higher. However, that was most certainly not due to the person catching the baby. People didn't wash their hands because they didn't understand infection. There was no technology. Now, I'm as natural as it gets, but even midwives believe in having some life-saving equipment on hand and any midwife worth her weight will know when to use it.

There are essentially two types of midwives here in the US. The first is a Certified Nurse Midwife. They are nurses who completed additional schooling after getting their RN. They generally work in hospitals. Then there are direct entry midwives, which is what I want to be. There are multiple ways to get into it. As of now, my plan is to start my doula training sometime in 2009. I plan on picking up a few of the books on the reading list in January. Living in a metro area, there are several DONA workshops throughout the year. I also hope to attend the Farm's midwifery assistant workshop in early 2010, once I have my debt paid off from school. I'm not sure exactly how my journey will end, but it's just beginning :)