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I began to study
midwifery on my own shortly after my son was born in 1997. I took my
first official midwif One thing that jumped to mind when I was asked to write about the Casa experience is the training you receive that you don’t sign up for. If it was listed in a college course catalog, it would probably read something like: “Woman’s Studies- Interpersonal relationships under extreme working conditions- 4 field credits.” The description might say something similar to: “Live amongst and discover the cultural and personal differences between women from different backgrounds, religions, races, and areas of the world with very different views and opinions. Learn how they can stand for and work toward the same ideals centered around women’s health.” This is an experience-based course. Sounds pretty interesting huh? Well, it is. The part left out of that lovely description is that you have to live in close confines, work non stop, and be informed that you are doing something wrong everyday. You will have little or no outside activities, and essentially no personal space what so ever. If this is sounding more like boot camp and less like midwifery training you are both right and wrong. What does this extreme patience-testing environment have to do with midwifery? Everything. First off, this is an intense crash course in learning to put your own ideas aside and listening to what others think and have experienced. Midwifery is not a practice where the same thing works every time no matter how similar the circumstances. The more you learn what others do the more tricks you’ll have up your sleeve when a situation presents it’s self and you find yourself needing to act. Also, you will have clients who will sometimes have some very different ideas about birth and life in general. It is vitally important to remain open minded and flexible in order to serve them to the best of your abilities. Learning to adapt and think quickly are two essential components of midwifery. Often working with only one practice for an extended period of time can limit your experience by only working with one or two demo graphs of women or one or two midwives who are often set in their ways. Their ways may be great and work very well and you’ll probably use these things when you go into practice for yourself. However, consider this- how many people did they train with and how many different ways did they learn before they decided for themselves what works best for them? How many conferences did they attend and how many years were they in practice and with how many different partners or back ups did they work with to accumulate the wisdom they have today? Chances are it took a lot of time and a lot of input and experiences from others before they got where they are now. Living and working with others that may have a completely different lifestyle and back ground than you will not only open you to becoming more understanding in general but will also introduce you to different kinds of people. When you come across a client in the future with lifestyle or belief similar to someone you’ve known closely (whether you liked them or not.) you have a frame of reference and will be better able to relate to them and thus better serve their needs. Secondly, Casa is a high stress environment. If you’ve ever worked at a busy restaurant then you may have an idea what it’s like. If not, well then, come to Casa and you’ll begin to understand the importance of tipping. We tend to think of homebirth particularly as being a lot less stressful than hospital birth and it is. Think about trying to manage your practice as senior, possibly have a partner and or an apprentice or two, working with the schedules of clients and trying to have a personal and family life. There’s also that instance you will surely come across at some point where you have a mom who needs special care in the immediate postpartum while you have her new baby to monitor and care for too. All of this takes a whole lot accommodation and ability to do eight million things at once. At Casa you will need to be caring for laboring women, caring for postpartum women and their babies, doing as many prenatals in a day as you may in a week at home, knowing where other students and staff midwives are and what they are doing and being a part of a team who must perform all of these tasks in a proper and timely manner wile you manage your home life from hundreds of mile away. That’s all in just one twelve-hour shift. If you can cope with that everyday for three months than you can cope with just about anything. Lastly, and again similarly to boot camp, you will face many situations you have not before and need to develop new skills to handle them. Fortunately everyone knows that’s why you’re there. You will be asked when you first begin your training what your skill level is so the things you’ve not done before or have little experience with, you will get the training you need in to accomplish them successfully. The fact that you will then most likely then do them over and over till you could do it in your sleep (and some nights you’ll feel like you are) is the big advantage Casa has over solely training at home. Casa de Nacimiento is to the best of my knowledge the busiest licensed freestanding birth center owned and operated by non-nurse midwives in the country. It also has some of the most experienced staff you will find anywhere. This is what has made it one the best and most popular training facilities for aspiring midwives spanning two decades. There is no where else you can get this much experience of this kind in so little time and with such high quality. One thing you must remember is that Casa birth is not homebirth. When you are caring for 40-80 women due per month there is no way you can possibly give them all the personal attention you would if you only had 3. This in no way means that these women are not being well cared for in the midwifery model care. Just because you will not have time to develop the closer more personal relationships like you would at home does not mean the women you will be caring for at Casa are missing out. There are fully aware that it s a busy clinic and they are not the only ones. You also must remember that they chose a birth center birth and are expecting to be one of very many women being cared for at once. They look around at the other 30 women sitting with them in the sala (waiting room) and realize you don’t have an hour to spend with them. This also in no way means you are not expected to treat each woman individually or with out the same respect you would anyone you worked more closely with at home. Making a woman you’ve spent fifteen minutes with feel like she’s had your undivided attention for an hour is an advanced midwifery and social skill. Casa is an excellent place to learn to remain sincere and caring when your time budget is and mental capacity are stretched dental floss thin. That, in my opinion, is a valuable life skill that extends far beyond midwifery. All of the skills I have described here are those I feel are essential for good midwife but you will not find them on the skills assessment test for NARM or listed probably anywhere else. I chose to focus on these instead to telling of the 100 births I attended in 15 weeks or the 37 primaries I accumulated in my time at Casa mostly because I feel the desire to attain “numbers” should not be anyone’s sole interest in attending this program. If that is your primary reason for considering a stay at Casa, you should at least be informed that you are in for much, much more. Who should come to Casa? Anyone with an open mind, a big heart, a strong constitution and an unwavering passion for natural women’s health care. It is a wonderful atmosphere for learning new things, fostering new relationships and accumulating wisdom to aid you in your personal practice and life in general. You will also find yourself gaining confidence in your current midwifery skills and learning many new things that you had hoped to learn as well as many you never considered but will find invaluable once you have. I hope my take on the Casa experience has been helpful to any of you considering whether it is worth your time and money to experience it for yourself. I find I use these experiences everyday in my own homebirth practice as well as my part time job at a women’s health clinic and in my daily life. I would also add that I would be glad and willing to return to Casa again to further the advancement of my skills as a midwife. This is a profession that in I believe you can never learn enough. If anyone is interested in asking me any questions or hearing more about my two stays at Casa and experiences I had while there then please feel free to contact me and I would be happy to speak with you. Sincerely, Helen Emma Stockton |
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training course in 2000. Since then I have served both as a primary