Tell me about Midwifery

Editorial Team / Admin · Oct 6, 2015

Welcome to AN! There are a few subforums here that you can browse through for information:

**LibraSunCNM, BSN, MSN, CNM** · Oct 7, 2015

I would suggest looking at the American College of Nurse Midwives' website, midwife.org, to answer some of your more broad basic questions about midwifery and women's health. There's a lot of good info there.

I've been a midwife for just shy of 2 years and I do enjoy my job. There are good days and bad, but the good outweighs the bad by far. There are a lot of changes I wish I could make to my hospital's practices, and I won't stay here forever, but for now it's a wonderful place to learn and be mentored by my fellow sister midwives.

DreamerMW · Oct 7, 2015

I would suggest looking at the American College of Nurse Midwives' website, midwife.org, to answer some of your more broad basic questions about midwifery and women's health. There's a lot of good info there.
I've been a midwife for just shy of 2 years and I do enjoy my job. There are good days and bad, but the good outweighs the bad by far. There are a lot of changes I wish I could make to my hospital's practices, and I won't stay here forever, but for now it's a wonderful place to learn and be mentored by my fellow sister midwives.

Can you please be more specific? I'm very interested to know about the challenges that midwives face in the hospital setting.

**LibraSunCNM, BSN, MSN, CNM** · Oct 7, 2015

My main challenges are working in a system that does not always support normal, physiologic birth. When a healthy, low-risk patient comes in (and I work in an inner city public hospital, so those can sometimes be few and far between), I dislike that I have to push and remind the nurse to do intermittent monitoring and have her ambulate, instead of leaving her in bed with IV fluids running and continuous monitoring. I dislike that I work in a hospital that allows VBAC, but we have increasingly strict policies as to who can actually attempt a VBAC, and so I see our section rates increasing. I dislike that we have no option for nitrous oxide in labor, which would be a great option for a lot of our patients. I also dislike the computer system we use, as I feel its full of redundancies and makes me spend more time looking at my screen than at the patient in clinic. Etc.

auson16 · Oct 9, 2015

What is your schedule like? One thing that deters me is being on cal frequently. Is that burdensome, how often are you on call? Is it just for your patients or are you on a rotation?

**LibraSunCNM, BSN, MSN, CNM** · Oct 9, 2015

What is your schedule like? One thing that deters me is being on cal frequently. Is that burdensome, how often are you on call? Is it just for your patients or are you on a rotation?

I'm not on call. I work 2 days a week in our clinic (8 hour days), and 2 12-hour shifts a week on L&D, usually one is a night shift and one is a day shift. The patients generally see the same midwife in clinic for their pregnancy, but they get whoever is on L&D the day they come in in labor. This this is a somewhat uncommonly humane schedule for a midwife and most midwives take call (if they do deliveries).

CNMidwife2Be · Oct 15, 2015

A lot of hospitals in my area have the same schedule for midwives for full-time work: 2 clinic days, 2 12-hour labor shifts (usually one day, one night). It's busy but reasonable.

cayenne06, MSN, CNM · Oct 17, 2015

And don't forget midwives do much more than catch babies. I work at Planned Parenthood, and absolutely adore my job. I did home birth for years and am more fulfilled in this role than I have ever been.