Margo joins me for the first in this new series about midwifery apprenticeship. As she says in our chat, it seems that the apprenticeship conversation has occasionally thrown the “baby out with the bathwater” (no pun intended!) around IF there is a structured path(And what it is), or not. I do feel like I have some responsibility to clear this up, since I may have muddied the waters over the years, talking about how intuition and a community “appointing” someone a midwife may (very rarely) take the place of a defined educational and hands-on learning path.

In this podcast, Margo and I share some stories and try to name and describe the stepping stones of the apprenticeship path; from the very beginning of being a green observer, to the “primary under supervision” role. This path is not identical for everyone, but even in the autonomous and radical midwifery world, a structure is needed. We hope this inspires conversation and questions, and we’re excited to continue this series with all topics related to midwifery education and apprenticeship learning!

Here’s the blog post we wrote for our Indie Birth Midwifery School students (and the world!) about our view and boundaries around calling oneself a midwife.

https://indiebirthmidwiferyschool.org/2021/07/01/claiming-the-midwife-role/

Download This Podcast Transcript

Podcast (taking-back-birth): Download (Duration: 1:18:09 — 47.6MB)

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