Growing up, my family lived all over the United States, in Japan, and in Turkey. We loved to travel, and always looked forward to the news of where we would go next. At 18, I moved to San Antonio, Texas to attend Trinity University and study Child Development. Following Trinity, I went to Washington D.C. for a year to train to be a Montessori teacher. My teaching experience was in San Antonio, for three years, with children ages 2 through 6.

In 1976, my husband Barry and I decided to travel through Mexico and Central America to find a place where we could live for a year and learn Spanish. We found that place, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, and volunteered for one year in a museum of Maya culture, Na Bolom. Na Bolom was also a guesthouse, library, and private home . It was a place where Lacandon Maya from the villages of Nahá, Lacanhá, and Metzabok could stay if they needed medical attention in the hospitals of San Cristobal. After the first year, we stayed on for the next fifteen.

When our daughter Erin was born in April of 1980, Barry and I were ecstatic. We had been trying to conceive a baby for over two years! She was a beautiful little girl, and I remember the joy of holding her and nursing. She lived for four days only. Erin’s death was probably due to an infection, although we’ll never know for sure. There are no words to describe the depth of grief of losing a child, but I do know that having experienced such a loss, our healing might come by opening our hearts to the joys of life.

Two years later, we were blessed to be able to adopt a 5 year old Lacandon boy, Chan K’in, and soon after that his 13 year old brother, Chan K’ayum. All my life I had longed for children; my sons filled my heart and made our family whole. Barry and I now have 5 very energetic and beautiful grandchildren who live in Bonampak, Chiapas!

Midwifery was something I had considered as far back as 1978 when working with the Maya women who were looking for a safer birth by traveling 20 hours to come to Na Bolom. While accompanying them to the hospital, I often wished I had midwifery skills. When I became pregnant, I read and reread Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery, and in my heart she was my midwife. Fortunately, I was invited to attend births in Chiapas, in the hospital, at home with friends, and in the Birth Center run by an older midwife, Doña Amelia. I came to the Northern New Mexico Midwifery Center in 1995 as an apprentice.

Training in Taos with Elizabeth Gilmore, Kate Trieschmann, Carla Poindexter, and Melissa Bauer was supreme! In 1997, I was asked to join the staff as one of the midwives. It is truly an honor to be with families during their pregnancy and as their babies come into the world. I love this incredible work, serving women and families of Northern New Mexico and Mexico.

 

 

When I was pregnant with my first daughter, Treska, I was living in former East Germany with my husband. I didn't even know the word “hebamme” which means midwife in German. As my baby grew in my belly, my fascination and passion for pregnancy, childbirth, midwifery and parenting issues grew with her. Before my second daughter, Kaya, was born I remember driving through fiery flame colored tree covered mountains with my husband, Falko. We were discussing childbirth and pregnancy, as usual, and he looked at me and said, “Have you thought of becoming a midwife?”

I had graduated from Bard College in New York a few years earlier with a major in German Studies. This brought me to Germany where I lived and worked for almost eight years. I hadn’t thought that I could actually begin doing professionally what I was doing every day in my heart. I was so filled with joy with the realization that I could be with women and share their experience in pregnancy and childbirth for a lifetime. My pregnancies and births had just been absolutely extraordinary and just indescribable and I wanted to be with and support women in their own experience. Shortly after that, in 1998 I began my first internship at Bethanien Frauenklinik in Leipzig, Germany where I worked with 12 different midwives including two of my midwives with Treska. After researching different educational opportunities for aspiring midwives I came upon the Northern New Mexico Women’s Health and Birth Center and the National College of Midwifery– we took the plunge and relocated our family to the United States to Taos, New Mexico where I began my rigorous academic and clinical training. I became licensed in the state of NM and certified nationally in 2002. I then had the fabulous experience of practicing with a homebirth midwife in Taos for a few years. In 2005 I was invited to join the team here at the Midwifery Center. I am incredibly honored to join the Midwifery Center and to work side by side with those who trained and inspired me.

 

 

Hello, my name is Bobbie Boyd. I come from a small town, Ragersville, in Ohio. In my fun-loving family of 6, I share the youngest spot with my twin sister, Brianne.

My interest in midwifery started when a midwife in my hometown was put in jail for using pitocin to stop a woman from bleeding too much after having her baby. Ohio does not permit midwives to be licensed, thus they practice without licenses to meet the needs of women requesting out of hospital births. Her jailing raised huge debates in our community - a community that has a high population of Amish families who use midwives for their births. Was it a crime that this skilled midwife used an appropriate drug to save a woman’s life? The political aspects surrounding midwifery and families’ freedom to choose to birth their babies outside of the medical establishment were revolutionary to me. The more I read books like Spiritual Midwifery by Ina Mae Gaskin, the more passionate I became.

A homebirth midwife, Dotti Kirkpatrick, gave me the opportunity to apprentice with her while I was enrolled in the National College of Midwifery. With Dotti, I attended homebirths and developed a wonderful foundation of childbirth as being safe, natural and normal in the family’s home.

During the time that I apprenticed under Dotti, I became increasingly aware of the maternal and neonatal complexities in the developing world and felt strongly called to offer midwifery care to women and babies who are in desperate need. This led me to Mercy in Action, a midwifery mission’s school, which emphasizes working and training in the developing world. I served in the Philippines where our student tuition paid for the running of a free clinic for the poor. I was able to attend many women prenatally, in labor, birth, and postpartum at the clinic. I discovered how basic midwifery care, nutritional counsel, and support with breastfeeding can make a positive and dramatic impact on individuals and a community.

After the Philippines, I returned to Ohio and volunteered at an Amish and Mennonite birthing center in New Bedford, Ohio. The clinic has two staff midwives: Sandra Hess, CPM and an Amish midwife, Clara Nisley. During my time with these women I learned more about herbs, water births and became more understanding of the Amish lifestyle.

I am honored to be a midwife here at the Northern New Mexico Midwifery Center. I commit myself to an evidence-based practice of midwifery that is always evolving, safe and compassionate to the individual needs and aspects of each mother and baby.

 

I am the second of nine children and grew up with babies and birthing being a normal family affair. I can remember sitting on the kitchen floor watching the midwives examine my little sister's placenta,burning holes in my mother's nightgown trying to warm it in the oven(the midwife said she should have a warm nightie to put on.).

I read Spiritual Midwifery when I was sixteen and suddenly saw my mother not as -- mom -- but as one of those amazing beings who grew and gave life I identified myself for the first time with the amazing circle of sisters, mothers, daughters, connected by the universal experiences of womanhood.  Suddenly periods were ok, even fascinating. I was inspired by the design of the female body. I was inspired by the stories of love, power, pain and joy; by the quiet heroics of women every day.

I began my apprenticeship with Amy and Cathy, my mother's midwives, after high school.  We attended home births in Central Michigan and went to quite a few Amish births. The kerosene lanterns and wood stoves and cold treks to outhouses in the middle of the night are all mixed up with my first experiences of midwifery. After two years of apprenticeship, I attended the Institute of Maternal and Child Health program focusing on midwifery for developing countries and completed internships in Guatemala and the Philippines. Vicki Penwell, the director of the program, provided us with the inspiration, training and tools to respond to maternal and child health care needs in developing countries. After the simple beauty of Amish birth in Michigan, the challenges women faced in Guatemala and the Philippines when dealing with extreme poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of education and overtaxed health systems were shocking.  To be a women in that situation is to know suffering intimately in countless ways: entering into the experience of their lives taught us new depths of strength in being "with women." 

After graduation, I returned to Michigan and worked in the homebirth practice for one year before moving to the island of Cebu in the Philippines to start another mission clinic. That experience condensed: joy, excruciatingly hard work, beautiful families and babies (over 1500 in 2.5 years) and finally, burnout. Two and a half years later, I moved to Taos, New Mexico, married my long time, long distance love, Jesse, and began practicing with the midwives of the Northern New Mexico Midwifery Center.

Our son, Elijah Telford Gemmell was born on March 30, 2004 in our living room.  Joan, Marcy and my sister-in-law, Sarah, were in attendance and the experience of being on the "other side" of midwifery filled me with a deep thankfulness for the women who dedicate their lives to "being there", and inspired me by their love, patience and strength.

My name is Marcy Andrew. I was born and grew up in the suburbs of New York City. I never knew what a midwife really was until I was twenty-three and pregnant and knew deeply and intently that I wanted to give birth at home.

It is difficult to trace the roots of my interest in home birth because I cannot think of anyone I knew who had had a baby at home or even who had spoken about it. I was traveling from Alaska mid pregnancy in search of a warmer place to settle and to have my baby. Being at the time entirely naive about the politics of midwifery, I now consider it a miracle and an act of Spirit that of all places to land I chose Taos and ended up in the hands of Elizabeth Gilmore. She attended my beautiful birth at home and all went as perfectly as I trusted it would. Elizabeth sat grounded like an old tree at my side, exuding the power of confidence in nature's processes, keenly alert to the wind's comings and goings. I had never experienced anything more enlightening and awesome than giving birth!

Four weeks afterwards, my son died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and on the same day, I was struck with the vision of being a midwife. Perhaps it was because I felt so inspired by how I had been cared for and wanted to pass that on, or maybe it was because looking new life straight in the face allowed me to heal from the trauma of death. I almost immediately began my apprenticeship and found that midwifery was everything I imagined it would be plus a whole lot more.

After I graduated and got my license, I had the opportunity to work in a maternity clinic in the slums of a large City in the Philippines and to travel to Guatemala where I learned Spanish. I was very excited when the occasion arose for me to move back to my beloved community of Taos and to be a midwife in the practice that is so dear to my heart. Being a midwife has been a huge gift to me in many ways. I consider it an incredible honor every time I am so blessed as to attend a birth.