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Author: 
Renata Hillman, CPM

 

Advice from an Elder Midwife

Tandem nursing is becoming more common these days. More moms are nursing through pregnancy and continuing to nurse their older nurslings once their new baby is born.

Author: 
Renata Hillman, CPM

Well, it’s been a year now since COVID began to change our world, country, states, and practices. I wondered when it began how this would play out.

It started with a huge number of inquiries from pregnant Mothers not wanting to birth in the hospitals. This primarily related to two factors:

1. Not wanting to put themselves and their newborns in a more vulnerable area with COVID.

2. Not wanting separation from their support team.

When midwives put on their legislative-policy-changing hats, they often encounter statements that call into question the qualifications and competency of direct-entry midwives. I recently penned a response to patently false information that was being circulated in my home state of Oklahoma, surrounding a new licensing law for CPMs and CMs. I was deeply saddened to see harmful, crowdsourced, misinformation being spread around, and believe we must hold policy makers accountable for securing and reporting accurate information about our scope and credentials. 

I apologize for the harm created by my words in the President’s Report, published in the MANA Newsletter on January 19, 2021. It has since been revised. I spoke with the privilege of being white when interacting with people who actively worked to propagate the violence of neo-Nazi ideology based on a belief of white race supremacy and anti-semitism. My words trivialized that evil which resulted in pain to the people who have been most impacted by it. I am grateful for their admonishment and deeply apologize for the injury.

Hello midwives and supporters, 

 

An Open Letter on the Licensure of CPMs in New York
 
Greetings,