Sami's Story

I started thinking about midwifery when I didn't even know what it was...I had an intense desire to be of help and to make a difference in my career. When I finally found out that midwifery was a viable career choice, I couldn't get it out of my head. 

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Flash forward to finding a school (Mercy In Action College of Midwifery in Boise, ID), and finally working up the courage to apply, and then beginning to read doula books and watch birth videos - I knew I had found what I wanted to do. 

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I learned so much in school that translated to the work I was doing in my apprenticeship. It was vivid and applicable, and very tangible in so many aspects. I have loved my job from the moment of the very first birth I attended: watching a woman push on a birth stool in the dim light of her kitchen, light shining down from the high ceiling above, the whole room still and quiet, simply waiting for the babe to be born. 

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My journey has taken me a lot of places: rural Southern Idaho, where women birth their babies in the hot summer, no air conditioning in the home, with the window open and you can hear the harvest trucks out in the fields, digging potatoes by the ton; all the way to Fairbanks, Alaska, where we caught babies all through the long winter night, and into the bright, never ending sunny days of summer. I can't wait to catch babies in my little hometown of Hamilton, Montana. 

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Empowerment through this process is so important. I love walking with families and helping give them choices about the process, helping moms and dads catch their own babies, and watching them learn about the process along the way.