Linda Healey and Janice Marsh-Preslesnik

Recorded April 12, 2007 Archived April 12, 2007 38:53 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id: MBY002637

Description

Friends and collegues talk about midwifery.

Participants

  • Linda Healey
  • Janice Marsh-Preslesnik

Transcript

StoryCorps uses Google Cloud Speech-to-Text and Natural Language API to provide machine-generated transcripts. Transcripts have not been checked for accuracy and may contain errors. Learn more about our FAQs through our Help Center or do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions.

00:08 My name is Janice Marsh prelesnik and I am 47 years old today's date is April 12th 2007 and I'm sitting at the storycorps mobile outfit in Bronson Park in Kalamazoo, Michigan and I am friend and Midwifery colleague with Linda Healy who I'll be interviewing today.

00:35 A my name is Linda and I am 54 years old and I am with Janice and we are going to be talking about Midwifery.

00:46 So Linda and I are both home birth midwives in the greater Kalamazoo Battle Creek area, and that's what we wanted to talk about today. So Linda I just wanted to ask you a few questions. I'm just really interested in. How did you how do you start out being a midwife? What made you want to be a midwife honest as you know, I'm a mother of three adult children now and I was quite Young when I became pregnant with my first child and in the early seventies is there weren't very many options and I remember going to an obstetrician and he gave me a book. I probably went home and read that book at this part. I don't even know the title, but I read that book cover to cover and I thought there has to be a better way to do this process of breathing in the United States.

01:45 And that really was the impetus in in in really in my search and how to birth the children that I had and a really weak. I became very interested in more natural ways of having my babies and my last baby was born at home. And in that Journey it was like Eureka, I found it and ever since that time. I have been a teaching educating encouraging women to you really go deep inside of them self as and how they want to give birth and honor and respect their bodies.

02:32 So you had your last baby at home? And and that was in 1979. So the journey took a while to find out how to do it and I had a similar story where I had my first baby in 1981 and I just knew growing up on a farm and watching all the animals give birth that if they were uncomfortable. They were just stopped their labors get up move usually away from my brothers and

03:03 And start labor again when they felt safe and I thought well, I think I would do that too. I don't want to go to a hospital. I don't want strangers around me. You know, I'm very shy and private and I thought I need to just be at home just be at home. That will be the safest place for me to be I was a city slicker and we really didn't talk about birth, but somehow babies came and no one really my mom my grandmother never talked to me about it and I felt very alone as I became pregnant with my first child and so it was a real quest of how to get back to simple troll way of living.

03:53 And so how did you do that there what what I mean? It's very difficult when a culture does has these rituals and and does things a certain way to do something totally different.

04:10 And I think everybody does it in their own way for me. It was like looking up into the heavens and saying if there is a real Creator up there that real creator has to come down and Lead me and I must say it was a real religious. I opening experience to know that as a religious being we all have that entity that the god enough will really respond to our questioning and my husband and I took that journey together and basically came out of the world for a while and went into the country and started learning simple ways. And then that an environment there was a doctor who has since passed away that was in the early late 70s early 80s, and he received his obstetric will training doing rural home verse and I remember my husband and I basically sitting at his feet cleaning Knowledge from him and he and

05:10 And return telling us how to how to live how to carry this little child and his one Sage advice was to walk 2 miles a day and I won't have a problem. It's so simplistic and it was to take advantage of good food real food not processed food and real good water and sunshine and an exercise all those little simple things that really when you look at it can be to you can do that and live that quite cheaply and that's how my husband and I chose to live and we were blessed together to have that are 3rd and our last child at home and it was a quite a quick labor and a my husband actually was catching the baby the doctor even though he live down the road really didn't have time to make it for the whole complete delivery. He walks into the door. The my son's head is out and he says,

06:10 My husband what are you waiting for? Just take that baby out in a Whopper and it really to this day. My son just celebrated his not too long ago. And we've you was born on March 21st 27th birthday and it still says Goosebumps up and down my spine and it has an endearing quality to my relationship with my husband.

06:42 So so after your your son was born and then did you just decide all I want to do this work? I want to become a midwife. It was even before that time living in a small a real Community women were having their babies on this campus and the doctor was available and his he would actually Janice be in the kitchen. The instruments were boiling on the stove.

07:15 And the women would be with the laboring mom and I was invited to go to several of those first. I really was Observer of all the interactions that were going on. And after the baby was born he would just pop his head into the you-know-what slightly ajar the door pop his head in and say congratulations to the mom and the dad and leave and that was my initiation that women take care of women.

07:49 And that's why that's and that's the whole essence of Midwifery. So then how did how did you further your education? What did you do in in your journey in your path to becoming a midwife?

08:09 I had a lot of people really wanted me to become a nurse. My father-in-law was obstetrician Friends of the family. My husband's family were obstetrician. It was like in that was in the early 80s. So I was really strongly encouraged to become a nurse Midwife. However, I my philosophy of living did not Embrace Western medicine and I wanted to do it in a different way as I studied the history of Midwifery. It was always that the older women with hand down the knowledge of of the generation to the younger generation and that is the way I wanted to learn. So I went to Texas and work at a birth center for a summer with the blessing of my family, especially my husband. He was like

09:05 Basically throwing me out the door you will do this and the children rallied around and so I learned from and more experienced a group of midwives in Texas at a birth center and just ate that whole culture up and that was in 82 and since then I've been working with other midwives and you know, we've done verse together when we've had meetings around campfires and meetings around our kitchen tables reviewing verse and I think we've never ever stop learning about Midwifery and how to be with women.

09:45 I have been a long time a long time over half her life here, and we're still going strong.

09:55 Oh, yes. Well, I remember that next time I stay up all night. And yes.

10:00 So what life lessons has Midwifery taught you?

10:05 I mean he sort of you talked about that but anything else like being with women themselves yourself with them anything that you could

10:17 Peanuts good for instance too. If you could tell pregnant women one thing what would you want to say?

10:25 When I became 50 and also became a grandmother. I really felt that my life was changing and that

10:36 There was a big transition in my life and with my age.

10:42 IPI become more of an educator for younger women

10:48 I and I think that I try to live my life in such a simple way that I can hand down Simplicity to my mom's. Yes. We live in a very complicated World technology is advancing.

11:07 Faster than we can keep up with and yet I think my prayer is keep life simple.

11:14 And to trust in a van in my walk with God. I really want to trust that divine power that resides within each human being and to honor that space in their life and to keep on trusting. How about you and I would say to say to pregnant women that you have every every ounce of energy every ounce of knowledge to birth your baby your body knows how to do it. I mean I look at life from more of looking at natural process in my spirituality comes from being in nature and that God is in everything and and God is a natural process and that you can do it and you don't

12:09 What you will learn from going through that process.

12:15 Is it's just amazing and it teaches you things about being a woman just things about life that you will never know. If you just hand it over to somebody else and it helps you be a very strong mother to if you go through the birth the process in the natural birth process it teaches you to teachers need to be strong when you think that you can't

12:43 It's another principle that I like to encourage in. My mom's has to take responsibility for their own good health.

12:52 And to to live to gather knowledge and to live that knowledge and to be responsible to make those life, alt life-altering decisions for themselves and like you said to not hand it over so freely, why would we want to take that away from somebody because that is their journey and we as midwives I just always see myself as the Dork becomes open to us at such a sacred moment and we get to come in and then it's like an ebb and flow and then we get to go out and the door shuts and that family becomes one in United and I just want to honor that and

13:47 I always think to how important that whole going through the whole process and then it just builds and builds and builds and the babies born and the

13:59 You know, it's it's static and and the time when the parents just totally fall in love with a baby and

14:10 I don't know if you can really truly experience that to the fullest. If you're not allowing yourself to go through the whole process to begin with. It's a Continuum of the process which keeps continuing and I remember times when my kids would be, you know.

14:31 Be in little stinkers and I'd want to be like, you know, I'm so frustrated with you, but I would go back and remember how I felt when I first saw them and how and that intense love and it's like okay, you know what I can just take a breath and I can we'll just get through this and it will be okay, you know, and I think why without that moment, you know how different would life be and it frankly it really so bothers me that so many babies and mothers don't have that chance so much in our culture with the birth culture that it is in the rituals that are happening in the babies are born in there often a little

15:17 Bassinet or whatever and you know, I for me that changed my physiology it change every cell in my body when I had that baby in my arms the first moment and I end that was going back to the very beginning watching the animals grow up. I saw animals that if things weren't just right for them when they gave birth to and they would get up and leave they'll adopt like leave their babies as if they never just gave birth to that baby. And and I think that's one of my most for me as a midwife important aspects is to just be there with a family to support them to let that process happens and to watch them a new family be created and to watch them all fall madly in love with each other and it is an honor to be a part of that. There are ties.

16:17 When I go to a birth and I see that happening, but I can't look too closely. I think sometimes it's just like it's a sacred moment between their family and then if I look too closely, I know I'm going to start crying and I'm and I know and you know as midwives we have a work to do and that's and that's always fun to just to do our work and to do it wild and I remember I remember myself being born and I remembered such details and and how it felt to be pushed out and the color of the room in the nurses and their haircuts and what they were wearing it. But mostly I remember the doctor had black curly hair and all the time that I was little anytime I saw black curly hair. I was so attracted to it and that was like my first impression and my mother verify

17:17 Is she can't believe it's like how could you know that? How could you know it that that's alright. That's all true. And I felt like that was such a great gift to me to have that because it made it even clearer to my hall self how important the environment is in the first impressions for the babies and and and then you know, my husband has black curly hair to

17:49 That's not why I got married to him, but it was like what I was attracted to and I think wow what do we want? Our baby's first impressions to be that of you know, plastic and beeping in bright light or that of relaxation and calmness in looking at their mother, you know, and I always Robert to when the cord, you know is so amazing to me that the cord is just almost always just long enough for the baby to go right up in the mother's arms right at her breasts no longer know shorter every once in awhile. It's a little too short, but are they ever like that is so

18:31 Amazing

18:35 So do you have any questions for me how you know, this is a very personal point in my life and it's not something that I share too freely. But your birth story is a testimony that babies do come out and they do there at the sensory the tactile sensory perception of a baby is very very that's more mature than any of their other senses since you felt a lot and as a woman a young woman in the in the 70s, I had I really Janice I had to learn the hard way to become a midwife. My daughter was born prematurely. Nobody. Nobody talk to me about what she was going through. She live in a bassinet for two weeks. I was not encouraged to breastfeed her.

19:33 For my second child in the hospital not encouraged to breastfeed actually was told that I could not breastfeed cuz I was small and isn't it funny that my third child was 9 pounds and got bigger and bigger and bigger on breast milk alone. And so my nursing are my mothering skills or deflated for my first two and I really had to make this Herculean attitude. Like there has to be a way by golly. There is a way or I'm going to learn how to do this how to be a mother because I was not nurtured as a child. So and that my breasts would work and it was encouraging to feed at night baby only on breast milk and it was encouraging to birth at home where nobody interrupted and the Goosebumps for my husband just got bigger for him and that baby just coming to my breath

20:33 And what that did? I I really want to hand that down to our young women because Janet says, you know from when we when we started doing our home practice.

20:47 Ants and that's what like 25 25 years of Ronnie five years. We should be having a party today in this booth.

20:57 Set the home birth statistics have not risen.

21:02 And C-section rate are still creeping higher and breastfeeding is not even though the American Academy of Pediatrics has encouraged me to breastfeed for a year. We're not seeing the escalation and breastfeeding moms. So I think at our jobs as older midwives is really to be traditionally handing down this knowledge that is being swept underneath the Carpet Inn in for technology.

21:44 Are there was there was so beautiful Linda in so how do we do that though? I mean that's like the frustration of my life to see women not knowing that carrying, you know, just looking to technology. I mean for crying out loud. I'm amazed that well, I guess maybe technology has gotten into sex too. But you know, it's like wow you had sex she got pregnant, you know, you didn't have to have a machine to tell you how to do that. You knew how to do that. You did it. So, why would you think that you need a machine to have a baby for you? I think a lot of it has to do with our cultural perception of pain. And what pain is I think ideally there should be several definitions for pain or for Sunsations, but you know in general

22:44 I would say our whole culture doesn't want to feel anything. They want to be numb people want to be numb. They don't want to feel they want things basically easy on their own time schedule and that's just not conducive to pregnancy birthing and parenting really and so we just see now see so many troubled kids to and home. I just think I forgot where I was going with that but like what my husband says, you know, you do one birth and his his little Mantra is one good birth at a time. And yes, we're just one one entity here. And so we have a responsibility to educate one at a time and to be a cohesive unit as midwives.

23:40 And for me and I know that you have helped me with this is we live in this culture that doesn't you know, that doesn't respond well to pay more who does always try to teach. My mom said it's not a pain you can run away from its of a pain that you can sing into and surrender to so your body can let this baby out and it works and then another part of that it for our culture at midwives is we're really taking a risk. We take a risk every day to go and work a with women who want to have their babies at home there only one to 2% of the population. So they're they're odd. They're not where I got specimens walking on this planet had radical meaning to the root to the amen to the roots and we had we live in a highly litigation.

24:31 Biotique, so and I know you know this for me that we that sometimes there's a fear and fear does not lend itself to what we do. So I know you have been there for me to walk me out of fear that we we really can go into the birth room with freedom and peace and Harmony and just Minister one good birth at a time and really basically shut out sometimes the but the the the words that we get from our culture that wrong and it was going to be responsible and what if they sue you and so that's the culture we live in and that's the that's the part where we wanted. We just don't we want to do our work wise and then we won't don't want us to come to that because we will not do a good job.

25:31 That's true the whole fear-monger attitude and you know, we both we both have had friends who went through Western nurse Midwifery School and came out and both asked us which I thought was we did have the honor of debriefing them and to get them back to birth is normal. And and I think that for me that was eye-opening experience that they came out of their training with fear and looked us to get it back to normal.

26:08 All right. I forgot about that.

26:12 People say to me often, you know, aren't you afraid of getting sued in like well, no, not really because I don't have any money, you know, I don't have anything that you can take friends with the people that I work with in general, you know.

26:29 It's I'm not worried about it. I hope you know that's not a fear for me.

26:37 I know like going back to pain in the fear of pain and you know.

26:43 I am so interesting because I remember growing up my grandma used to say oh given birth is a day off from work.

26:54 Cuz she works so physically hard on a farm, you know, so her having a baby was nothing and then you got to lie around for a few days and people brought you food and took care of all the other children and did everything and so she thought that was you know quite amazing and you know, I I never heard about childbirth as painful I heard of it as you know, it's it's hard work. It's like a storm moving through you. That's what my grandma and my mom is so I could storm Don through you and I think you know, that's that's a good metaphor for it because it's like intense energy and I've had four babies. I know one of the birth I can say. Oh that's painful like out I would normally describe pain. It was like a ligament really pulling that were attached to my cervix really pulling. Okay? Well that felt painful, but the rest of it

27:54 Not described as painful. It was like being in a storm intense energy going through your body. And so I think it's so important to to come up with more different language than what we're used to in the culture and and somehow

28:16 We need to that needs to be that voices to be heard. That's why I'm so excited. We could do this today love away to have our voice.

28:25 Heard and it's it's funny to I like to tell my mom when they think of giving birth in sure there's that a little anxiety and you don't know what the future holds and that's normal but then it's like, okay go back. Think about your great. Grandma your grandma your mother. They all did it and there's a little bit of security to that. I've got a safety net to it and it's you can trust it and I always thought to okay, so it's been what 90 years now that babies were started starting to be born in the hospital. So before that all these people in the whole world were born at home and okay. Well, you know, there's a lot of people it works it does work and

29:23 I can't say that, you know, the infant mortality rate has gone down that much now, I don't know if it is it has it all fell in the water. And yes, sometimes there's risk to life. There's a risk of being born. There's Arista living actually, I always feel it's riskier to get in my car and drive someplace. They have a baby, but do we think about that as far as riscos people drive cars all the time?

29:59 And

30:01 And why aren't we like scattered that not wanting to do that? And that's what we want to teach and to embrace in their own life is to live our life in peace and simply and Stenton don't need to enjoy life and to know that there's no guarantees right about anything. I always feel like when I'm with a family that the story is already there ready to be played out and I feel as if if I were going to try and manipulate that that that's stealing from their story from their life that I'm trying to steal what is rightfully given to them from, you know, from the greater spirit and powers of the world, you know, and it's like this none of my business, you know, I'm just supposed to be paying attention. So I'm going to pay attention and I like this artist.

31:01 Call at the Midway best just to be a guardian. I know to let it unfold as it goes and

31:09 I like that part at the job and not but not to get so involved that we Cloud it. It's their story. I like that. I like it when their family says when it's everything's done and they said I could have done that without you. I'm like, yeah, I did a great job. I remember training somebody and we were going to a birth and I have done several burst for this family and we've always had a great time with the family will this particular birth the mom and the dad were upstairs and they wanted to be by themselves and there was a good basketball game on downstairs.

31:46 And I knew that they would call when I was needed and sure we go up and check the heart tones with a baby. Make sure everything's okay. Mom has you know her juice or water by your side and everything's taken care of. So we just peek in and go out and that she has her baby. It's great birth go in the car with my Apprentice where dialoguing about the birth and she says to me I really didn't get to go do anything. I don't even know why I came and I said to her.

32:19 That was a good birth. That is a birth. I pray for every time I get in this car to go.

32:29 And it is I just love those simple simple purse.

32:39 And so how was it for you when it isn't simple?

32:45 Well, that's where all the education comes in writing an essay.

32:52 We just sat generator lies and what is normal and to know that there is a wide variety of normal and to be wise to what is not normal in the act and respond appropriately and that's why they hire us as a midwife.

33:10 To be the guardian to let them know when things are nut just so to dialogue about it or to seek appropriate care if necessary and it's not a failure. That's what I really want to let people know if things don't go right at home and it's not a failure. It's just that we need more help and we need to respond appropriately get to the hospital. Let them know why we're coming so things can be ready and I am very grateful very very grateful that there are some doctors who will work with us and who are who invited us to to come from home to the hospital and the moms will get good care and I'm very grateful for that environment, but it is not a failure because there are other countries around the world at more babies are delivered by their midwives and they they just need more skilled care or more.

34:10 The technology and we should be grateful for it as a society. That's what I'm grateful to do when it's really necessary and needed and I feel really grateful hear that there are there have been a handful of people that have been really willing to to help out women when they really need it and I always felt like cash. You know, that's what hospitals are for. I remember you not doing well. Yeah taking a class for from an obstetrician. She had two of her babies with direct entry Midwife and she said to me, you know, I don't mind taking home birth transports because that's what I've been trying to do that she just made it like this is what it really is about more high risk, and you know, we don't do high-risk at home, but we are aware that my print my transport rate is quite small is less than 10% So so we know that it doesn't happen very often.

35:10 And and do you know what your C-section rate would be?

35:15 It's right along like 5% of the 10% That would be is under 10% So we just have a few more minutes. Is there anything that you want to?

35:37 Just finish up with talked about ad.

35:43 He hasn't it.

35:53 Births have you seen over seen but really you mean in all the years?

36:04 You know, I think I've been to approximately 600% and I've been I've done over a thousand burst a little over a thousand.

36:17 And if there any anyone and this is a hard question, is there anyone birth that kind of will always stay with you or is it the hardest question of all is well for me? It's going to be easy because I was at 1 I've been actually to two of my grandchildren's birth.

36:39 And the thought those will always always be those were transforming and they have they have a storyline to him which we can't get him. But I knew I became a wise woman an older wiser full moon at the birth of my that the bird that I the first grandson that I attended. What about you? Oh gosh, there's so many there's just, you know, there's some some birds that have happened with some pretty outrageous kind of circumstances, you know one that ended up out in the front yard, and you know, I might be a mod and I had fallen on a blueberry smoothie in my hair was covered and I'm you know, and who I'm like this is crazy and then there's the the stories of

37:39 I know the women had to work especially hard to give birth, you know, sometimes a little hand was up by the mouth and it made it bigger diameter and just you know, it took a little more time for the baby to move through and and so just to watch her work especially hard and to do it. It's pretty amazing. So there's all kinds every it's just a miracle every every time it's a miracle every time it's like there's no way that babies coming out of that little hole, but it's what they are.

38:15 I tell people I tell people that I'm going to quit Midwifery when I don't see the miracle every birth. I know and every precious and every baby so different and has their own personality and and there are some that you really want to watch grow up because you wonder what they're going to be when they get older. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and it's really fun being older now and watching yeah.

38:47 Okay. Well, thanks for having us. Yes. Thank you.