My Story: Searching for a Midwife

By Saniya Ghanoui —

L talks about the process she went through to find the right midwife to assist her during her pregnancy.

Note: L is a native French speaker. Instances of improper English grammar are not typos of the transcript processor. 

Transcript: 

OBOS Today: How did you find the midwife and what were you looking for? 

L: So COVID happened, and I relocated to my mother’s house and so all my plans changed because I was in a very different location, and I was, I had this vision that I wanted to give birth at home. And so, I started looking for a midwife that that could support that. And realized that, by calling this woman that I had like I found her name on the forum on the Internet, and she told me that, unfortunately, the States did not support home birth and so she had no insurance for it and so she had to stop doing it because it was too dangerous and expensive for her own career. But she said that she had find a way to kind of go 50/50 that she was renting this birthing room in a hospital, and we would go there just for labor and giving birth and, and I could go back home right after and that would be just her and no one else in the room. And so, I started doing the like, the, the catching up because I met her at like— 

I was pregnant at like maybe six or seven months so it was really interesting because I had, like, started all my birth preparation before in Paris and I didn’t know that, existed like so much, there was so much thing that we could do, onto, prepare for birthing practically. I mean using our bodies and being like experiencing the preparation, whereas in Paris, all I was offered was like theoretical class where someone was speaking and giving me a lot of information, but nothing was embodied. And, and there she was like showing me how to massage myself and giving me tons of like books to read and sending me to different practitioner that could like help me and my, my awareness and I discovered all that so late in my pregnancy and it’s not, and it’s interesting because I was really looking for that beforehand and I couldn’t find it.

So, I knew there was something, but it was so hard to get to this knowledge that was there and I, I found it incredible that, that it was, yeah. It was all this path of looking and searching and searching and searching to finally find what I was looking for, but I hope I, like, I wish all this was what every woman would receive and the first place. 

Related Articles:

The History of Midwifery