How I got here....

I also have a tendency to go on for far too long when explaining why I want to be a midwife, how I got to where I am and where I am headed from here so I will try to give the summary of the condensed version.


I first learned about birth doulas in 2001 and thought it sounded interesting. I happened to have time available between quitting work and starting college so I took the doula training course.


Spring break of my senior year I went to visit my Grandma in rural Idaho and we stayed the night at her friend's house - her friend happens to be a midwife. I mentioned to my mom that I thought it would be an interesting job and less than 3 days later I got a call from my Grandmother saying the midwife's assistant was getting married and I could be the new assistant if I wanted to be. Three months after I graduated I moved to the middle of nowhere Idaho and began working as a midwifery assistant. I realize now that it is usually much harder to find a midwife to work with but at the time I had no clue how blessed I was especially since I hadn't even been looking.


The midwifery practice I worked with wasn't very busy but I was able to attend over 20 births and learned many skills in the time I spent there. For mainly financial reasons I left after two years and figured I would just go back to having "real" full time jobs like I had before. I soon found out that I could never go back to my old life as being involved in birth had changed me. I spent the next two years being involved in different midwifery communities where I lived, looking into different midwifery schools, working as a doula, and trying to figure out what role I should fill in birthing.

A year ago March I attended a birth as an assistant and wound up being the only one there when the baby was born. A few months later I then began looking into midwifery school again, but more seriously this time and found out about the proposed merger between Bastyr & SMS. SMS had been my favorite school when I had looked before and I got my undergrad degree at Bastyr. So last July I began hurriedly trying to figure out how to take all the pre-reqs so I could apply for the 10-11 school year. My crazy year of working while taking online and hybrid classes is now almost over and I begin school at Bastyr again in September.

I am excited for the program but also nervous. The midwife I have worked with the most didn't use (or even carry) any meds and was very traditional. While I believe that the SMS/Bastyr program respects the birth process as natural it is much more medical that anything I have done before. I have some concerns about it causing me to become fearful or distrusting of birth. I hope that I will be able to hold onto what is good from what I have already learned and blend it with the new information.

I GOT IN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah! I got accepted to the midwifery program! So now I have to study for my finals so I pass my current classes & then take a whole semester of microbiology independent study over the summer. Should be do-able, many not exciting and fun but possible. And I have to figure out where I am going to live, what new kind of computer I want to get for school, how I am going to afford it, where can I find people who want to give me money, etc, etc, etc. But all of that is way more fun than having to figure out Plan B if I hadn't got in.......

Interview

So I have my interview for midwifery school next week. I am super nervous and not sure what to expect. Unfortunately the internets have been completely unhelpful so far. They have lots of advice to explain away bad grades and flaws etc. Hello! Some of us are perfect and don't have any flaws. Well at least no bad grades....

And now we wait

I mailed in my application this morning so now I have to wait. The first letters saying hi we want you to come in for an interview or thanks but no thanks will be in the middle or end of March. Then interviews are in April or May and the final acceptance or not letters are the end of May. I was thinking all the pre-reqs were going to be the hard part of trying to get into midwifery school. Now I think it may be the waiting for letters that'll be hardest....

Working on the app

Well the application is available and I have my 3 people to write my letters of recommendation and the applicaiton filled out now it is just writing all the extra essay stuff that goes with it. I think that is the hardest part. I can write papers, I have written tons of them but writing all the why I want to be a midwife stuff is much harder. I know why I want to be a midwife but expressing that on paper is a challenge especially when I am so nervous about how I write things cuz I really want to go to that school!

Open House

This weekend I am going to the open house for the midwifery program that I am hoping to get into next fall. It is far away and I don't know if I really have the time/money to do it but I think it is important to go there and meet some of the people who will be teaching or running the program. I really want to find a midwifery program that will meet my needs the best. There aren't many programs in the running for me right now but this one is the one that looks most interesting to me and I have a free place to stay when I go visit so I am trying it first. If for some reason I don't like what I find out then I guess I will have to reevaluate my plans and maybe check out some other schools.

Application still not available!

I am not good at being patient and the application for the MS in Midwifery at Bastyr STILL isn't done yet. And the lady in charge of answering emails from all the people who are wondering when it will be done sent out an email of things we can do for the application process before it is done. And she made an analogy about waiting for the application being like waiting for a 13 day overdue baby, which is good cuz I have been in that type of situation before and the baby did eventually come, just had to be patient.

But I got some good news today. The mom for the birth I did in last March is pregnant again so I should be able to start doing pre-natals again soon!