I was still a student when I first sat through a Sara Wickham lecture. In the twenty years or so since that enlightening day, I’ve come to ever and increasingly treasure her smarts, her insights, her ability to communicate, and her abundantly warm heart.
Sara’s blessed us again with her newest publication!
In Group B Strep Explained, Sara shares a great many facts and figures but, I feel most importantly, she highlights these vital truths:
We are individuals.
Unique persons with unique caches of circumstantial and experiential variables and values.
It’s simply not possible for a single course of treatment to be equally suitable to all the many billions of us who live and hope for life upon this orb of green and blue we call earth.
We all desire good things for ourselves and our little ones, especially in the realm of bringing our little ones into the light, but these good things are only things that may be tried for. They cannot be guaranteed.
Sadly, no such guarantees exist.
We each need the freedom to be able to take what we know, to take what we don’t know, to take who we are, and to take what we hope for, and to mix those things into conclusions and decisions that resonate for ourselves.
Decisions we alone will have to live with and, therefore, must be able to own.
Decisions that will be honored and supported.
Many thanks to Sara for providing families yet another opportunity to evaluate the ins and outs, ups and downs of a challenging topic as they work toward forming those decisions.
And thank you, Sara, for another vital tool for birth work practitioners, providing both the chance to expand our understanding, as well as to be gently admonished.
We do indeed need to be sensitive as to how we communicate with our clients. How our manners, how our words, how our protocols and various practices, and how our unavoidable biases stand to affect the soul sitting across from us with her hands clasped and twisting in her lap.
After all, she may be one of hundreds or even thousands of women we’ll tend through the courses of our careers–but she’s the only one her, the babe in her womb is the only babe in her womb, the birth of that baby is the only time that baby will ever be born, and the life they will go on to live together will offer no do-overs.
Isn’t life filled with such challenging subjects?
Let’s see if we can explore these subjects together while also respecting one another and holding space for one another.
You may purchase this gem for yourself at Amazon.com.
You may learn more about and from Sara at sarawickham.com.
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
