All the things I want to say but can’t

I am applying for nursing school and have to answer a pretty basic question about my motivation and experience and why they should let me in. I am feeling very conflicted because 1) a nursing degree is only a stepping stone to what I really want to do – Midwifery and 2) I am really not happy with the state of our medical system (I am speaking mainly about the state of insurance and how that affects your health care) and though I realize midwifery is within the health care system, my goal would be to work outside of the medical care system as much as possible. So that may sound pretty bad when applying to nursing school.

I want to be a midwife because I feel like it gives woman back the power that medical intervention has taken under the guise of better, more efficient, more comfortable care. I want to be midwife because I want people to feel connected and more personally I want to feel connected. I have worked in an office environment and communicate so much by phone and email and really have no connection to anyone I work with. In my life I want to have a real, meaningful connection with people. I want to be a midwife because in my heart of hearts I believe having a natural childbirth is better than a hospital birth.

I am completely amazed that America has the highest mortality rate among infants and mothers among developed nations. How can that be? We also use midwives less often than any of the other developed nations.

To some extent I get it, having a baby is painful and woman would rather not experience the pain when medical advances have made it so woman can have a painless delivery. I get that. I guess I am most bothered that the risks associated with planning deliveries, inducing labors when it is not medically necessary, drug intervention are not really discussed. I am bothered that woman can elect for a cesarean, woman can pick a delivery date. Birth is a totally natural process that will work itself out if you just let it. Of course not in every case. Of course, there are instances where medical intervention is necessary and of course I support this. There are cases of high risk pregnancies where natural childbirth is not recommended.

I guess more than anything I feel like woman are not getting all of the facts. Or just plain out being lied to. One woman I knew had her first child via emergency cesarean, with her second child her doctor told her that because she had a cesarean with the first child she will have to have one with the second. As a mother I would have never questioned that, why would you? As I am getting more interested in natural childbirth and the use of a midwife I come across memoirs of woman who say they felt really bullied into having a cesarean when it was not necessary and wanted and did have a homebirth for their second child. I feel like woman are being guilted into or scared into things they may or may not have wanted to do.

I just want woman and families to have all of the information and be able to say I understand all of the risks and I still want the epidural, the episiotomy, etc.

And maybe this is sad but I watched this Ricki Lake documentary and this is what made me want to be a midwife.


We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong.
~Laura Stavoe Harm