Learning

I have been apprenticing at the Birth Place for a few weeks now, and have already learned a ton. The staff is awesome, and my preceptor (the main midwife) has me shadowing several different roles so that I understand the workings of a birth center. I think this experience will really help me in the future. Not only do I sit in and participate somewhat in the prenatal and postpartum visits, but I've also seen what goes on behind the front desk, helped with intake and history taking, and helped with labwork.

Before I write my NARM (to become a Certified Professional Midwife) I need to have a bunch of skills signed off by preceptor. Along with this, I need to have conducted a certain number of prenatal and postpartum exams, baby check-ups, assists and deliveries. I need to conduct 75 prenatal exams on my own. For a lot of students, this would take quite a long time while working with a homebirth midwife - often less than 10 prenatals are done per month. But at the birth center, we had over 45 moms come in yesterday! Can you believe it? This has a lot to do with the fact that the Birth Place has an easy-access clinic for women who are uninsured or on medicaid (government insurance for low-income - for those of you Canadians reading this). Their prenatal care is done at the Birth Place, but they deliver in the hospital (a lot of them are required to because of risk factors).

That being said, this apprenticeship also exposes me to a lot more things than a "normal" midwifery practice would. I take tons of notes all day on topics that I have to come home and look up.

One more thing about this center that is awesome is that the consult doctor (the one who delivers a lot of the hospital women and the one the midwives consult with regarding risk issues) has started coming to the center to do the consult visits with the high risk patients. That way, they are still in familiar surroundings during that visit and get to know the doctor that will be at their delivery. How cool is that!

So anyhow, I'm really enjoying it. It doesn't feel like "time off" at all though - in fact, I feel more busy than when I had my job!