While most babies in the US and Europe are born in hospital and many mothers feel more confident leaving their prenatal care in the hands of an obstetrician, many parents are becoming more interested in having a registered midwife and a home delivery. This offers a number of advantages to parents and opens up what can be a very fulfilling career.
There are a number of ways to learn midwifery. You should be aware that you need to pass the NARM (North America Registry of Midwives) inspection; they will then allow you to be registered as a certified midwife. But before you can do this there are a few things that you should do.
First off, you should study. Studying nursing is very helpful in the field of midwifery for obvious reasons. You can either attend a university to study or study with a distance learning program, which is very advantageous in that it will allow you to earn money at a temporary job more easily while you study. Taking a four year course and becoming a registered nurse is required even before becoming a registered midwife. But even before studying nursing, you can start as early as high school to study courses that will serve you well as a midwife, such as health and biology.
The next step is to become an apprentice to a registered midwife. If you do not know one already then you can ask at an obs/gyn or hospital administrator to recommend one to you. Hospitals often work hand in hand with midwifes as the midwife is required to refer any mother she is seeing to the hospital in case of complication in the mother’s pregnancy. After this, you can get in touch with the midwife and ask her directly about becoming her assistant. You will have to put in a minimum of hours in attending births to qualify as a midwife; be aware that you will have to have over 1,000 hours of experience before you can take the exam from the North America Registry of Midwives. You can also attend the births of family and close friends, not acting as the midwife would but as a birthing coach, who assists the mother while a doctor or registered midwife attends to the delivery of the baby. During this time you will gain valuable experience in delivering a baby as well as in prenatal and postnatal care for both the mother and the baby.
Something you should also be aware of is that you will be required to get re-certified every three years after you have already become a professional, certified midwife. As there are many advances in the field of medicine nowadays it is very important that you stay up to par with all that latest developments in this field. You should keep studying and keep abreast of developments that will help you to be a better midwife and enable the mothers you are assisting to have complication free, healthy pregnancies and deliveries.
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