The COVID pandemic presented many challenges for MSN graduate students. Both my program track and graduation timeline trajectory were thrown off course but I am a firm believer in everything happening for a reason. During the lockdown, my clinical practicum was put on hold giving me time to finally birth this passion project in order to continue to work towards my life’s mission of helping womxn and LGBTQ individuals in their attainment of health and wellbeing. The restrictions imposed on birth room occupants made it almost impossible for midwifery students to attain their birth requirements to graduate and so I pivoted to the Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner track. Although devastated at the time, I could not be more excited about all of the different directions my career can now go and how many different lives I can help enrich as a nurse practitioner. I graduated top of my class with my Master’s of Science in Nursing in December of 2020, a wonderful ending to one of the hardest years of my life. With the devastating loss of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, there are some pretty large ‘LGBTQ/women’s civil rights and social justice’ shoes to fill and I will continue to do everything I can to ensure the progression of both of these movements. Outside of direct patient care as a WHNP, this platform’s offerings and EBB workshops (parents-to-be and healthcare professionals) are just some of the ways I am trying to show up for a broken system’s shortcomings.

Womxn’s Health, Pregnancy & Birth have captivated me for as long as I can remember…It wasn’t because I was born into a family of midwives or doctors or that I was the eldest of numerous younger siblings; in fact, to my knowledge, there was not one midwife or healthcare provider in my ancestral lineage (although I am sure there are some medicine women mixed in there) and I was the baby of the family. It was something else entirely and I have been trying to describe it ever since. At risk of sounding too cliche, it can only be best described as an inherent calling and I have come to learn that this is shared amongst most, if not all of the best birth workers and womxn’s healthcare providers. My actress mother and therapist father were very puzzled to see my barbies’ shirts stuffed with cotton balls and their young daughter proclaim with a big proud grin “she’s going to have a baby!”. Instead of cartoons, I insisted that TLC’s ‘A Baby Story’ and various medical programs would be what I watched during my minimally allotted T.V. time after school. I sat in awe and wonder as I watched the number of people in the birth room multiply in a flash of an eye. But even as a young girl, there was something that didn’t feel quite right and I felt myself become angry and unsettled with how both the birthing person and the baby were treated and handled. I didn’t feel like the level of respect this moment and these beings deserved was granted and upheld. The cold, bright, loud hospital room with hard, unwelcoming hands whisking the baby away from its mother to be immediately dried and stimulated on an ambient warmer… even then, it just didn’t seem right and I struggled to understand why this was so and it didn’t seem like anyone had a good answer for me. And so, my lifelong journey began… to find out the answers to my many questions and to address the ones that needed adjustment…

As fate would have it, ‘The Midwife’s Apprentice’ was on my 5th grade summer reading list. This book was my first introduction to this ancient profession and wisdom tradition, and I have been working towards this goal ever since. When it was time to apply to college, I researched the different roads to becoming a midwife and decided that becoming a nurse and gaining experience in the hospital setting first before continuing on to become a nurse midwife was the road for me. Perhaps to better understand why the scenes of the hospital birth setting were how they were. I have always loved science and research, so the rigor of nursing school came easily for me and I graduated magnum cum laude with my BSN from California State University Long Beach. I returned to my birthplace in Northern California to find my first nursing position and was accepted into a new graduate program that helped ease the transition from student to novice nurse. Since then I have worked in high-risk tertiary hospital maternity units on both coasts in New York and San Francisco. Throughout these years of hospital experience, I gained an understanding and profound respect for medicine and the technological advancements needed to save endangered lives. We are incredibly fortunate to have access to these professionals and resources that not everyone in the world has access to. But I believe that in our scientific and technological race to find the best technology and the best medicine, we have forgotten the most important and foundational piece… the inherent wisdom of the birthing body, the birthing being and the eons of support of truly being with woman (meaning of “midwife”). I feel as though the pendulum has swung too far to the side of science and technology but I do not blame it for being so. We needed to learn and master when and how to save birthing people and their babies when their lives were threatened. However, it is now time to remember: that not all lives need saving, that normal physiologic birth needs not to be controlled nor manipulated and that we can and should trust and support the wisdom of the body and only intervene if and when it is needed.

Unfortunately, there is a “war” going on between both sides of the pendulum instead of a symbiotic relationship for the betterment of womxn’s healthcare, pregnancy and birth.  Instead of arguing about which side is better and, more importantly, for the ultimate wellbeing of birthing people and their babies, we need to recognize our own and the others’ strengths and weaknesses and understand that we can fill each others’ gaps and together be stronger than we would be as individual parts. Unfortunately, until that can happen, there will be paternalistic, hierarchal power systems at play and prioritization of factors other than the ultimate wellbeing and respect of the birthing person and their baby.

My years of experience as a labor and delivery nurse allowed me to witness first hand how exceptional medicine provided by excellent healthcare professionals can and does save lives and prevent longterm illness and disability. On the other hand, I have witnessed profound interventional abuse/overuse and devastating obstetrical violence which I have suffered my own secondary trauma for being involved in it. This comes in many forms and I have seen the damage it does in both the families I served and within myself. As a nurse I could only do so much to advocate and protect my patients’ wellbeing but the guilt and shame for not doing more when I knew something was not right was far too great to bare; and so, I knew then it was time to return to graduate school. I knew that within this power framework, I needed to be a provider with more autonomy and well, as I cringe to say it,… power… to be able to sit at the table and have my voice heard in order to adequately advocate for the beings I serve to protect. As a nurse I could only really listen ultimately to one person’s orders… the providers and my voice was only heard sometimes, depending on the provider and the situation. As an advanced practice RN (certified nurse midwife and/or nurse practitioner), I would be able to listen to the individual’s wishes and actually adhere to what they saw for themselves, only guiding when needed for safety. The world of womxn’s healthcare has strayed so far from what it should really stand for and this is evident by our morbidity and mortality statistics, especially for minority groups. The future can only be brighter with change agents devoted to making the necessary changes, standing for what is right and both sides working together as a symbiotic structure that supports the ultimate wellbeing of birthing beings, their families and their babies… holistically… body, mind and spirit. I believe in us and I will not stop fighting as a frontline warrior for this cause in any and all ways that I can.

To say I would be honored to be a part of your road to health, empowerment and the care you deserve, is a vast understatement. I believe that through birth not only is a baby born but a new being out of yourself as well… a beautiful and powerful transformation into the new person you will ultimately be. This is one of the most important transformations of your life. The education you gain, the choices you make, the people you choose to support you will all be a part of this birth… the birth of your baby and the birth of a new empowered you. This is a momentous time, a time of gestation… a time of transition… a time of transformation… a time of

BIRTHING BEINGS