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Questions
about My Midwifery Practice
How
many babies have you delivered?
Over
2500. I delivered about 1000 of those babies at home and the
other 1500 at either Alta
Bates Hospital in Berkeley or Kaiser
Permanente Hospital in Walnut Creek, California.
I stopped counting once I started working at Kaiser, because
they were piling up too fast. On two occasions at Kaiser, I
delivered 9 babies in 12 hours.
Have
you delivered twins or breech babies?
I
delivered breech
babies and twins
only in the hospital and with an obstetrician also in the room,
because, in both of those situations, things can quickly go
wrong at the end. I would never knowingly attend either of those
situations at home.
I delivered about ten sets of twins and five breeches. Three
of the breech babies were second babies in twin births.
What
was your business arrangement with your backup doctor?
I
was always blessed with doctors who backed me because they believed
in midwifery, and they weren’t interested in making money
off me. They realized that the spin-off and patient goodwill
that they received as a result of their open association with
a midwife was worth more than any monetary reward.
I rented office space from my backup doctor at an affordable
hourly rate. I paid him a flat rate for each hospital birth
that he backed me for, and if the patient developed complications
necessitating him doing the delivery or a Cesarean, I paid him
50% of whatever I received from the patient or the insurance
company.
Were
you totally independent?
I
did all my own scheduling. I paid for my own malpractice insurance,
office rent, and assistants, and I billed all the insurance
companies under my own name.
So I was more independent than most midwives, far more so than
most who are in private practice today.
However, I couldn’t have practiced at all without a supportive
backup doctor and hospital to which I could turn when a patient
developed complications. So, no, I was never totally independent
in the same way that a physician can be.
What
did your family think of your midwifery practice?
When
I wasn't home for Christmas morning two years in a row, I began
to wonder if they were all going to divorce me, but otherwise
my husband and three children made whatever concessions were
necessary to make my career possible.
What
do you think of childbirth today, in 2001?
Sometimes
I feel disappointed that so many women no longer seem to want
what we midwives are best at offering: help getting through
labor without drugs and the routine use of machines. And I’m
dismayed, as most medical professionals are, at the trend toward
viewing medicine as a business and not as a healing art. But
I’m thrilled that young women are still being called to
the profession of midwifery and hopeful that the tide will turn
and that they will eventually be able to practice as I did during
those wonderful years in the 80s.
I’m glad I had my children when I did, and I’m grateful
I had the opportunity to deliver those 2500 babies when the
climate in Berkeley
was so ideal.
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