TRANSCRIPT OF ANSWER
When I was a new graduate nurse, I was very involved in the intensive care of childbirth and was very excited about -the very ill mom’s- taking care of them, and the critically ill moms. It was soon after my experience as a labor and delivery nurse with taking care of the critical care women that I visited, a birth center in Stuart Florida. All of a sudden I saw another side of nursing. I walked into this house that looked like something out of better homes and gardens and I spoke to a midwife there and she told me about midwifery and the birth center itself. I went back to my work and in my critical care area and I said, why? Why are we doing these things for normal women? Hospitals and critical care for obstetric women are good for those that are sick, but most women are not sick.
Most women are healthy, and us treating everyone the same as if they are a bomb waiting to go off. That was when my interest in midwifery started and I started the journey of a kind of 180-degree turn from thinking that everybody should be high risk to why are we doing this? And why are we doing it in a hospital? This is how I made my travels from a labor and delivery nurse to being interested in being an active participant in those choices for women to becoming a midwife. Actually spending many years at the hospital I still had that desire to fulfill that; Helping women out of hospital births that are healthy and want that empowering experience of a birth center.
