At the end of high school, I felt unsure of what my career path should be. I know now that I did not have enough life experience and had not been exposed to enough professions to know what direction was right for me. I began at my local community college as a music major but dropped out after an unplanned pregnancy in my third semester. The positive (and negative) experiences that I had in my pregnancy developed within me the knowledge that I wanted to become a nurse midwife. I sought out midwifery care for myself and found that it was not easy to access. There were not enough midwives in my area. I knew that there must be others who could not gain access to midwives. I felt incredibly lucky to find a practice with openings within an hour of my home. In much of my life at this time, I felt judged. But I felt empowered in these appointments. When I attended appointments at the office with my midwives, I was treated like an intelligent pregnant woman who could make educated choices for my body and my baby, not like a young, single mother. I found a community of like-minded women here who respected my body and my wishes without judgment. I have worked for 17 years towards the goal of becoming a nurse midwife. I know that there are so many ways that midwives make an impact. Having midwives present changes the birth philosophy of an obstetric/gynecologic practice. The medicalization of birth has created a dangerous fear of birth that is pervasive among providers and the community. Midwives approach birth with less fear, knowing that this is a natural bodily process. Midwives screen for issues that need attention and support the wishes of the pregnant person. I want to provide greater access to midwifery care. I want to make an impact by supporting the birth choices of women. Many women must fight for their birth choices, such as having a water birth, choosing a vaginal birth after cesarean, birthing in different positions, or declining unnecessary interventions. I want to make these standard practices and collaborate with patients to create the best birth plans for each family. I can lead support groups for those who need special support. For example, teen or single parents, those experiencing unplanned pregnancies like I did, people suffering pregnancy loss, and patients with postpartum depression. Additionally, because black patients and people of color are especially likely to have poor pregnancy outcomes, these patients need additional support and must be listened to when they report their worries and physical symptoms. I plan to create a culture of providers who listen to their patients wherever I practice. The biggest impact that I can have as a woman in the healthcare field is to make other women feel valued and respect their choices. My experiences will help me to have compassion for others who are in challenging life situations without bringing judgment to the room. I returned to school as an adult learner to pursue my dream of bringing better care to more women. This journey has had many challenges. I hope to impact a generation of women to feel empowered in their health care and trust their own decisions.

I am a future midwife. Nutrition during pregnancy and infant nutrition are pillars of midwifery practice. Good nutrition in these life stages affects the health of the individual over a lifetime. Key areas where I hope to educate and collaborate with my patients are 1) helping patients maintain a healthy pregnancy weight, and 2) supporting those who wish to breastfeed do so effectively. It is important to be body positive with patients in the midwife's office. These people are going through many bodily changes, including weight and appearance changes, as they grow a new life inside them. Achieving healthy weight gain is important for the health of the mother and the child. I want to work towards maintaining this health by actively engaging the pregnant patient in conversations about healthy food choices and the risks of obesity in pregnancy. These include the increased risk of preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and cesarean section delivery. Obesity in pregnancy can also cause miscarriages and impact childhood obesity. I believe that having conversations early and often during pregnancy planning and gestation can empower pregnant women to take charge of their nutrition and decrease these dangerous risks. I plan to approach these conversations with compassion and create practical plans for the patient, while attaining the highest level of nutrition for pregnancy and beyond. Additionally, a human’s earliest nutrition impacts their health over a lifetime. Breastfeeding decreases the infant’s chances of developing asthma, diabetes, and obesity. It improves the immune system, making infants less susceptible to ear infections and seasonal respiratory infections. The breastfeeding parent also enjoys health benefits from providing their child with breast milk. Reduced risk of female cancers (uterine and breast cancer), postpartum depression, heart disease, and osteoporosis have all been studied. Not all parents will choose to breastfeed, and there are many factors that impact this decision. It is important for me to support those who do choose to breastfeed and impress upon them that they are doing something powerful for the lifelong health of their child. Midwives strive to utilize wellness strategies that minimize illness and unnecessary interventions in our patients. Promoting good nutrition at all stages of life is a central tenet of midwifery philosophy. I plan to emphasize the importance of nutrition to specifically support breastfeeding and reduce the incidence of gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and c-section in my patients. In my studies, I will build skills and knowledge to communicate well with patients so that they are empowered to make the best nutrition decisions they can for their families. This will make our communities healthier, one family at a time.

Someone that I love struggles with mental health. My wonderful husband pushes back against his mental illness daily while continuing to care for our family. My experiences being his partner have changed how we care for our family, interact with friends and loved ones, how I care for my patients as a nurse, and how I understand the world. When we started our relationship, I would say that my husband was the strong one. I was a young single mother coming out of a relationship that had kept me financially reliant on government programs and stolen my confidence. My ex would have loved to have kept me quiet and in the house, with no options. The immediate difference in attitude between him and my husband was shocking. My husband saw a strong woman in me, unable to get out, so he helped me to see her too. He supported me endlessly as I went back to school, first in vocational programs and then college level. He became a wonderful, active stepfather. We grew our home and family together. While I was completing challenging academic programs, his own challenges began to emerge. He had experienced a difficult upbringing, including divorce, abuse, sexual assault, and a parent who drank and drugged. It had always seemed as though he had overcome the odds and left his childhood behind him to become a stronger man. However, when the pressure was on during my last semester of nursing school, the residual products of this past became too much to handle. He was spiraling in clinical depression and anxiety. His medications were not working. He was passively suicidal all of the time, and finally, his thoughts had moved past passive suicidal ideation. It was time for me to be his rock. I created an intervention of sorts for him. I asked a few trusted friends to come over and talk to him with me about going to a treatment center for help. He was resistant at first. But then it was revealed that he felt scared that he was not going to make it out of his depression, and this could be his only chance. Admitting him was terrible, and the wait for him to be well enough to come home was exhausting. Medications were adjusted, and the beginnings of a regimen that works for him were implemented. I am so grateful for that hospital stay, because it got us back on track and quite possibly saved his life. Now, we must keep tabs on his mental wellness every day, but he has been able to return to being my partner as we both navigate his mental health journey together. I understand from these experiences that each family member in my house has different needs and that we are each a priority. We must prioritize the mental health of my husband as a pillar in our relationship and family life. All our higher needs stand on this basis of maintaining mental health for each of us. It has also changed my thinking in my professional life. As an aspiring midwife, I am now acutely aware of postpartum depression and general depression in the clinic patients whom I see. The social and psychological needs of these patients hold a different urgency for me than some of my colleagues because of my experiences, and I believe that I will treat them more effectively because of it. As I continue my education, we work to maintain a high level of wellness in our home. Some days are harder than others. I believe that I am stronger and more compassionate because of these experiences and will take them with me always.

I want to build a better birth philosophy in my home area of rural New York. To this end, I am enrolled in a graduate program working towards becoming a certified nurse midwife. Midwives change the way that we birth by providing holistic care rooted in the knowledge that birth is less of a medical event and more of a transformational one. I want to learn to provide care that honors the wishes of the birthing parent under my care. I want to learn to provide interventions when they are needed to protect my patients without being overly beholden to hospital policies. Bad policies can harm my patients. I want to learn to seek change when I encounter these policies so that anyone entering the hospital will get the same safe, respectful care. There are some very important factors that I dream of bringing with me into practice. I want to incorporate discussing the patient's birth preferences early and often in prenatal appointments. This is often not discussed at all before labor begins. I also want to provide women with the option of having their newborn placed skin-to-skin on their chest immediately following birth. This is a practice with many proven medical benefits that continues to be denied to new parents due to practitioners’ unease with changing the routine of separating the mother and infant at birth. I also want to bring waterbirth into my home area. The calming and pain-relieving option of giving birth in a clean pool of water cannot be accessed in any hospital in my region. How do I build this new philosophy? I believe that I will need to create a strong network of providers who also want the best for their patients. I believe that we will build it with one passionate practitioner at a time. Each one builds on the achievements of the others who have championed women’s health before them. Becoming a midwife will give me the foundation to provide the safe, supportive care that each patient in my community deserves.

I am a mother determined to show my children that you can indeed have it all. You can have a beautiful family, be successful in higher education, and have an impactful career. Let me show you how. After having my daughter as a 20-year-old single mom I dropped out of college to care for her. It seemed that it would be impossible to return to school with young children at home. However, these experiences also awoke a calling within me to work in women’s health. The care that I received illuminated the wonderful treatment that a woman can be given when her providers meet her without judgement of her choices or life station. It also highlighted to me that the U.S. maternal care system has a long way to go in providing pregnant women and infants with the care they deserve. The U.S. ranks among the worst industrialized countries in which to get pregnant and give birth, especially if you are part of a minority racial group. Our maternal and infant mortality rates are shockingly high. Women’s choices are ridiculed and their rights denied as they try to make the best choices for their body and their family. I have a strong desire to provide the best care for women with an emphasis on birth choices for birthing mothers. I have decided to answer the call to become a nurse midwife. My first attempt to return to school was a failure. My daughter’s father would not watch her as I attempted to complete my online course, and I ultimately failed out of the class. Life moved quickly from there. After having a second child, then leaving my children’s father to build a better life, and becoming embroiled in endless family court battles, it seemed like any further schooling would be put on hold indefinitely. An incredible shift occurred when I fell in love with my husband. He is incredibly supportive and showed me how to believe in myself again. I entered school. The program was for certified nursing assistants. I finished first in my class. After this I completed a licensed practical nursing program, this time graduating third in my class, with three young children at home. I continued to my associate’s in nursing, and through an online course advanced this to a bachelor’s degree. This journey has taken me 17 years from when I first knew that I wanted to become a midwife. Finally, this spring I was accepted into a highly competitive midwifery program while I continue to raise my four children with my husband. I am the sole earner for my family as I pursue my dream. Finding the time, money, and energy to complete these programs has been challenging but well worth the effort. As I continue my education, I believe that I do have it all, and I will continue to grow with this belief. I pursue my dream with my children in mind, to teach them that they can do anything. I pursue it with women in mind, knowing that they deserve to follow their bodies and their instincts to make the best choices as they grow their families. I pursue it with my community in mind, knowing that the way we start life impacts the health of our communities over our lifetime. We can have it all.

For 17 years my mantra has been “I can and I will, watch me.” This is because there have been many challenges on my nursing path, but for me persistence means taking the small steps that I can each day to reach the long-term goals. At the beginning of this journey, I was a young mother with few resources and fully dependent on the state for my early adult years. But, I knew from the experiences that I had during pregnancy and birth that I wanted to become a Certified Nurse Midwife. I did not have the ability to go straight into a nursing program, but I committed myself to a nursing assistant course and made this my first steppingstone on the path. Four years later I enrolled in an LPN program with incredibly strict attendance policies while also engaged in a heated family court battle. I am proud to have finished third in the class. I continued to achieve my RN, where I found support at my local community college to receive weekly talk therapy while at school and accessed the college’s food pantry to address my family’s food insecurity as I continued my studies. I was then able to enroll in an online bachelor’s program at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and completed it in December of 2024. The culmination of these many steps was my recent acceptance to a midwifery master’s program. There have been many changes over the years to my life situation, but I have been steadfast in making my education a top priority. Now, as the sole earner in my 6-person household I look forward to the most challenging and rewarding level of education. I often am asked what it is that a midwife does, do they even exist anymore, and if all I will do is attend births. Midwives do attend to all stages of pregnancy, labor, and birth but after seeking out clinical opportunities in the midwifery office and hospital settings I know that midwives do much more. They practice in family planning, birth control, STI screening and treatment, cancer screening, biopsy, menopause treatment, postpartum care, breastfeeding support, and support patients holistically with depression screening and providing access to social programs for patients with social needs. The thought of providing these services makes me feel like I will make a real difference in my community. I have adopted a new mantra now, though the old one will always be relevant to who I am as a person. I recently head the quote “your feet are about to walk into rooms that you once dreamed about”, and this is so true to my current situation that I hear it in my head as I wake up each morning. My feet are about to walk into the rooms where I will learn to take excellent care of women as they maintain their health over a lifetime, grow their families, and nourish their babies. This is a calling that I have been willing to spend as many years as needed to achieve. Now, I feel ready to walk into those rooms.