Today’s the day the paperback version of A Midwife in Amish Country is released!
What a wonderful way to celebrate the actual 17th anniversary of its last chapter! I became a NARM certified midwife on November 12th, 2002!
Here’s how that chapter begins.
A few days after Joshua’s birth, I spent a day working in the south with Jean. The next morning, I wrote a few lines about it my journal.
Jean intends for me to begin taking more responsibility for the clients down south once I pass—Ah! If I pass—my exam, and she feels the birth I just did is a good way to reacquaint myself with the community.
It was an odd day. It felt like the closing of a circle. Nine years before, I started working with Jean down there. I was only twenty-three then, amazed to be attending appointments and births at all, and feeling a strange mixture of both gratitude and apology as I did.
Truthfully, I still feel thankful for having been invited, as well as a bit apologetic, though I feel more confident now my help-to-hinder ratio has risen to greater parts help. Anyway, nine years, three hundred fifty-one prenatals, one hundred twenty-three babies, and one hundred sixty-three postpartums later, I found myself following along with my dear friend again, visiting the daughters of the women I visited back at the start, and that feeling swept over me—that circle-closing feeling—or, more even, the feel of a coil sweeping both close to and far from its origins as it winds its way through the years of my life.
It makes the next ten years seem nearer, and so real.
And before I could scarcely blink my eyes, ten years became fairly twenty.
Whatever will we see through yet another twenty?
Among the many things I’ll be looking for, I hope with all my heart to see moms and babies enjoying better birthing outcomes throughout our world as truly evidence-based birthing practices are adopted and facilitated by well-integrated midwifery care ♥
What do you hope to see?
Kim Woodard Osterholzer, Colorado Springs Homebirth Midwife and Author
Books by Kim:
A Midwife in Amish Country: Celebrating God’s Gift of Life
Nourish + Thrive: Happy, Healthy Childbearing
One Little Life at a Time: Recommendations + Record Keeping for Aspiring Homebirth Midwives
