I will never forget the moment I realized that I should give serious consideration to becoming a midwife.  I was working for a state senator and one of our interns began describing a college class in which the students had visited a birthing center.  My husband and I had planned a special weekend out of town, and before we left I hastily did a websearch and printed out as many articles as I could from the Midwifery Today website.  I spent the next three days in a fog, reading the articles and wondering about my future, marveling at the sense of calling that was beginning to register, conscious of feeling pulled by something greater than myself.

Backing up for a moment, I have always been passionate about women’s reproductive health issues.  As a preschooler, my favorite book was, Where Do Babies Come From? by Margaret Sheffield (it’s out of print now, but still, in my mind, the most lovely, wholesome portrayal of the miracle of human reproduction, including a beautiful depiction of birth).  In elementary school, I tucked a doll under my shirt and gave birthing demonstrations on the playground to a few intrigued classmates.  I wanted to become an OB/GYN almost from the time I learned what the letters stood for (of course, at the time, I was also planning on becoming a teacher and the first woman President – it never occurred to me that I would have to choose!).

And then, like so many other girls, as I made my way through junior high and high school, I began to lose confidence in my math skills.  Although I still made straight A’s, I had to work much harder at algebra, trig, calculus, chemistry and physics than at any of the humanities, and I began to resent and dread the work I had to do.
 
By the time I got to college, I had myself convinced that I wasn’t a "math and science person" and had decided on a career in law and politics.   My mismatch with the hard sciences was confirmed for me in my first semester when I earned a C in a course I took to fulfill part of Harvard’s required science curriculum.  The course was Reproductive Biology.  Instead of pointing me back toward my dream of becoming an OB/GYN, my miserable performance only reaffirmed my decision (incidentally, my performance as abysmal only on exams; I earned As on all of the labs!).  It was only when I finally took the second half of the science requirement in my last semester on campus, and earned an A in a physics-based course on Einstein, that I realized that perhaps I had misjudged my aptitude.

Six years after my debacle with reproductive biology, I left law school after just a few weeks, convinced that I needed more time and space to clarify whether law and politics were the right path for me.  I found a terrific job working for an inspiring politician, assuming that being exposed to someone of this caliber would either jolt me back on track or help me understand that I had lost my zeal for political life.  And then one of our interns told me about learning about midwifery.

I knew almost nothing when I began my research.  A few years earlier, I had read a novel about midwifery (Midwives by Chris Bojalian) during the year I lived in Jerusalem, and found myself intrigued.  But the novel reinforced my misconception that midwives only practice underground doing home births outside the recognized medical system, so I didn’t give it any serious thought.

After I began my research, and learned that there was really no viable midwifery program for me in Los Angeles, I decided to seek certification as a doula (labor assistant) as a means for me to confirm and clarify my interest in the field. I also set up an internship as an office assistant at a freestanding birth center.  A theme emerged from the many conversations I had at the time:  If you can become an OB/GYN, do it, because you will be able to make more of an impact and help more women as a midwife-friendly OB/GYN than as a midwife.   I knew that I had a mental block about my ability to handle math and science, but I also knew that the reality was that I was probably up to the task – and there was no way to know but to try!

So, after much deliberation and a visit with a midwifery program in New York that admits students who are not registered nurses, I cut back to half time at work and enrolled at UCLA to take post-baccalaureate pre-medical classes, with the goal of becoming an OB/GYN-midwife.  Although I knew that medical school would not provide me with the midwifery training I sought, I felt I could supplement what I was learning with time spent learning with midwifes on The Farm in Tennessee and elsewhere.  I was filled with hope and determination!

I successfully completed a year of physics, two quarters of chemistry, and a quarter of biology at UCLA.  During this time I also took advantage of UCLA’s Care Extenders program, which allowed me to work in labor & delivery, post-partum and the NICU at a community hospital.  This was a fascinating window into the medical world.

My last two quarters at UCLA were challenging because I was pregnant twice.  The first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage the weekend before my final exam in physics took place on a Monday.  Throwing myself into studying for this exam and earning an A was, I thought at the time, a clear signal that nothing could cause me to stray from my path!  The first trimester of my second pregnancy – filled with nausea and fatigue – coincided with final exams in chemistry, which I found much more challenging than physics.  Again, I managed to make it through and do well. 

I took the summer off as my husband and I prepared for a cross-country move to New York for his job.  In the fall, eighteen weeks pregnant, I began taking biology and organic chemistry at Columbia University.  Then I had my second-trimester ultrasound screening at 21 weeks, and my world changed forever.

You can read more about my transformation in The Case of the Missing Fibula and Famous Last Words.   To stay on topic here, I will simply say that my career path has – yet again – swerved.  I am firmly committed to my current career as a full-time mom for the next several years.  After that, who knows?  I do hope that my career path will ultimately lead to work with women’s reproductive health.  I doubt that I will go back to the pre-med studies in my late thirties and early forties; life as a medical student and resident is not easily compatible with Attachment Parenting, and waiting until after my kids are grown would mean becoming a doctor around age 50.  I am exploring my alternatives slowly and carefully, hoping to find a good fit.  For now, I am happy to share with you all of the resources I have gathered, in the hope that for every option I have discarded, there will be someone inspired to take what I have learned and run with it!