I’m so glad that I learned my midwifery from midwives in the home during homebirths. I learned there what I do there. (I know that’s a silly sentence, but think about it. Women go to an institution hoping to learn how to honor birthing women and then practice in another institution that depends on interventions and complications to make a profit…)
I help in the home and I’ve learned the culture of homebirth. Through the apprenticeship model, though the midwives I worked with didn’t have a formal apprenticeship during the years I was learning, I learned the skills I share today:
- reductions in hypertensive disorders through diet
- avoiding premature birth
- achieving a healthy birth weight for babies
- safe breech birth at home
- vaginal birth of posterior babies
- safe vaginal birth after cesarean
- resolving shoulder dystocia
I didn’t learn that out of the approved textbook or classroom training that tells many an enrolled past homebirth midwife not to share their knowledge about breech and other midwifery skills with the other students, but to stick with the curriculum. I’m grateful that homebirth (and hospital trained midwives!) came together to form a model of testing to show that the apprenticeship model works well. And I’m proud to put that to use as I hold the CPM credential from the North American Registry of Midwives.
Canada is promoting CPMs and has come out with statistics that also include CPM births. https://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-09-03-midwife-home-birth_N.htm