Having a natural birth had always been one of Connie Gonzalez’s top priorities. Each of her four children was a vaginal delivery.
However, the same doctor did not deliver all of them; in fact, it wasn’t even a doctor who delivered her last three.
After a job change seven years ago that brought her to the Women’s Health Medical Group (WHMG) in Fort Worth, Texas, Gonzalez decided to deliver her last three children with the help of a certified nurse midwife.
“I have nothing against doctors at all, it’s just me feeling comfortable,” Gonzalez, a certified medical assistant, said.
And to her there is nothing that puts her more at ease than being able to go to her midwife and know that she is in good hands.
WHMG is a private practice that not only consists of OB-GYN’s, but also has a certified nurse midwife on staff. It was here that Gonzalez was able to see how a nurse midwife operates and decide that was the kind of treatment she wished to have when she delivered the rest of her children.
Over the past 35 years the number of women using midwives has increased by approximately 200,000. According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, in 1975, only 19,686 women used midwives. In 2003, 305,513 women used midwives and in 2010, approximately 218,000 women used a midwife.
But there are still women who believe that obstetricians are their best option. Amanda Preston, Dallas resident and mother of two, has been seeing the same obstetrician for eight years.
“I don’t have anything against midwives except for the fact that they can’t do anything in an emergency,” Preston said. “I want somebody there encase there is something wrong. I don’t want to have to go from one place to the next.”
But midwives were around before obstetricians started practicing.
“There have always been midwives but through the evolution of midwifery there has been midwifery branched into nursing, but midwifery has not always been associated with nursing,” Mary Ann Faucher, director of the Baylor Nurse Midwifery Doctor of Nursing Practice Degree, said.
Nurse midwives are able to do almost everything for a woman except perform surgery. This means that they can give out birth control and other prescriptions, help with family planning, take care of infections and STD’s, perform pap smears and many other medical procedures obstetricians do.
“We typically take care of women throughout their pregnancy, child bearing years and menopausal years,” Marlys Spikes, a certified nurse midwife at WHMG said. “But because there’s not just nurse midwives certain people are very concerned as to the safety aspect.”
Over the years two groups of midwives have formed: lay midwives and nurse midwives. The hesitancy to use midwives and their credibility transpired from lay midwives. These midwives do not need any education, some never graduated from high school. Because of this some people generalize all midwives as uneducated, but this is far from true.
Spikes went through multiple years of education before becoming a certified nurse midwife.
She first went to school to get her nursing degree; then spent years teaching child birthing classes; became a birthing coach, sometimes called a doula; and then went back to school to a 365 day program to become a certified nurse midwife.
At the Association of Texas Midwives Midwifery Training Program students “learn everything from anatomy and physiology to providing prenatal care, to doing physical assessments, attending normal births but also knowing how to deal with complications when they arrive,” Course Coordinator Claudia Cruz said. “They learn how to provide care for the mother and baby up to six weeks post partum.”
It takes a lot of time and work to become a nurse midwife.
Spikes believes that with different movements educating people on nurse midwives the confusion will end.
“But also women are starting to wake up and read, they are reading statistics and what is going on in the hospitals. Well over 30 percent of women who walk into hospitals leave there with a c-section and [the United States’] maternal mortality rate is one of the highest in the world and it is going up not down,” Cruz said.
She believes that more women are seeking the care of midwives because they are hearing more about them.
She said movies like “The Business of Being Born,” which illustrates and explains what midwives do and how they operate, have put midwifery out there for people to see.
A natural birth is the only kind of birth Leela Harpur, a SMU junior, feels is right for her. Harpur’s mother delivered her at home in a bathtub with the help of a midwife.
“It definitely makes me think twice about having a baby in a hospital,” Harpur said. “Since my mom could do it back in the day at home I think I would be able to do it at home too.”
Whatever their reason may be many women are thinking twice before they choose who will deliver their child.
“Different women want different things,” Spikes said. “Not every woman is happy with the standard every day care, they may be looking for something that is very personal, and that is where a midwife steps in.”
